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+Project Gutenberg's Despair's Last Journey, by David Christie Murray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Despair's Last Journey
+
+Author: David Christie Murray
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22276]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DESPAIR'S LAST JOURNEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+DESPAIR'S LAST JOURNEY
+
+By David Christie Murray
+
+
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION--HOW AND WHERE THE STORY OF DESPAIR'S LAST JOURNEY WAS TOLD
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+A solitary passenger alighted from the train, and many people looked
+curiously after him. The mulatto porter handed to the platform a
+well-battered portmanteau, which was plastered thickly over with
+luggage-labels and the advertising tickets of hotels in every quarter of
+the globe. A great canvas bag followed, ornamented in like fashion. Then
+from the baggage-van an invisible person tumbled, a canvas bale.
+The coffee-coloured mulatto held out a grayish-white palm for the
+quarter-dollar the passenger was ready to drop into it, and stepped
+back to the platform of the car. The engine bell tolled slowly, as if it
+sounded a knell, and the train wound away. The curve of the line carried
+it out of sight in less than a minute, but in the clear mountain air the
+quickened ringing of the bell, the pant of the engine, and the roll of
+the wheels were audible for a long time. Then the engine, with a final
+wail of good-bye, plunged into the tunnel of a distant snow-shed, and
+the whole region seemed as quiet as a grave.
+
+The little weatherboard railside station was void of life, and there
+was not a soul in sight. The passenger had given up the ticket for his
+sleeping-berth an hour before, and had announced his intention to stop
+over at this lonely place. An altercation with the conductor as to the
+possibility of releasing the canvas bale from the baggage-van before it
+arrived at its expressed destination at Vancouver had reached the ears
+of other travellers who were on duty in the observation car, painfully
+conscious of the scenery and the obligations it imposed. To experience
+some ecstasy, more or less, was imperative, and it was weary work for
+most of them. They stuck to it manfully and woman-fully, with abysmal
+furtive yawns; but the skirmish between the conductor and their
+fellow-passenger came as a sort of godsend, and when the transfer of
+a dollar bill, incredibly dirty and greasy and tattered, had brought
+warfare to a close, they still had the voluntary exile to stare at. He
+was a welcome change from scenery, and they stared hard.
+
+He was a city man to look at, and had the garb of cities--tall silk hat,
+well worn, but well brushed; frock-coat in similar condition; dark-gray
+trousers, a little trodden at the heels; patent-leather boots; high
+collar; silken scarf. Everything he wore was slightly shabby, except his
+linen; but a millionaire who was disposed to be careless about his dress
+might have gone so attired. People had a habit of looking twice at this
+passenger, for he bore an air of being somebody; but the universal stare
+which fastened on him as the train steamed away was the result of his
+intent to deliver himself (at evident caprice) at a place so lonely, and
+so curiously out of accord with his own aspect. What was a clean-shaven
+man of cities, with silk hat, and frock-coat, and patent leathers, doing
+at Beaver Tail, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains? Why had he suddenly
+decided to stay there, of all places in the world? And why had he made
+up his mind without having so much as seen the place? These questions
+kept the occupants of the observation car in better talk than scenery
+long after the lonely passenger had landed, and long after the last wail
+of the engine had sounded in his ears.
+
+If he had come here in search of landscape splendours, he might have
+had his fill at once. The railside shanty stood at a height of some four
+thousand feet above sea-level, but the mountains heaved vast shoulders
+and white heads about him.
+
+Below, in the tremendous gorge, a torrent ran recklessly, tearing at its
+rocky confines with raging hands, and crying out in many voices like a
+multitude bent on some deed of vengeance--hurrying, delaying, turning
+on itself, maddening itself. Its bellowing seemed a part of universal
+silence. Silence brooded here, alone, with those wild voices for an
+emphasis.
+
+Right and left the gorge swept out into dreadful magnificences of height
+and depth, and glow and shadow. Cliffs of black basalt, scarred and
+riven by the accidents of thousands of years, frowned like eyeless giant
+faces. One height, with a supernal leap, had risen from the highest,
+and stood poised a mile aloft, as if it were a feat to stand so for
+a second, with a craggy head cut out of the sheet of blue. Mountain
+torrents, too far away to bring the merest murmur to the ear, spun and
+plaited their quivering ropes of silver wire. The shadows in the clefts
+of near hills were like purple wine in a glass. Above and beyond they
+were bloomed like an ungathered plum. The giant firs looked like orderly
+pin-rows of decreasing size for half a mile along the climbing heights.
+Before they reached the snow-line they seemed as smooth as the smallest
+moss that grows.
+
+The passenger regarded none of these things, but stared thoughtfully
+at the platform at his feet. He drew a cigarette from amongst a loose
+handful in a waistcoat pocket, struck a lucifer match upon his thigh,
+and smoked absently for a minute or so. Then he took the portmanteau
+in one hand and the brown bag in the other, and, leaving the railway
+platform, crossed the single line, and made a plunging, careless
+scramble through a narrow belt of undergrowth. In a minute or less he
+came upon a moss-grown way cut through the wood along the side of the
+mountain--the old Cariboo Track men used before the days of the railway.
+Weighted as he was, he found it warm work here, shut in from the cool
+breezes of the mountains and yet exposed to the rays of the mid-day sun.
+He wrestled along, however, for some quarter of a mile, and, reaching
+a small wooden bridge which crossed a runnel of clear water, set his
+burden down and looked about him, mopping his brow with a handkerchief.
+
+'This will do, I fancy,' he said aloud, and then began to undress.
+
+He stripped to socks, drawers, and vest before opening the brown bag,
+from which he took an old black felt hat, a shirt of gray patternless
+flannel, coat and trousers of gray tweed, a belt of leather, and a
+pair of mountain boots. Having attired himself in these things, he lit
+another cigarette, and smoked broodingly until it was finished. Then he
+walked back to the railside shanty, found the canvas bale, and slowly
+and with great exertion lugged it down the slope and along the trail. He
+panted and perspired at this task; for though he was sturdily set, and
+large of limb and stature, he was obviously unused to that kind of work,
+and by the time it was over he was fain to throw himself upon the
+moss and rest for a full half-hour. Being rested, he rolled over, and,
+stretching out a hand towards the discarded frock-coat, drew from its
+inner pocket a ball of Canadian and American notes, crushed and tangled
+together like papers of no value. He smoothed them out, flattening them
+upon his knee one by one, and, having counted them over, rolled them up
+tidily, and thrust them to the bottom of the brown bag. Next, he began
+to untie the cords which fastened the canvas bale, muttering 'Damn the
+thing!' at intervals, as the knots refused to yield to his unskilful
+handling. Finally, when the work was two-thirds done, he made search
+for a pen-knife, and, having found it, severed the remaining knots, and
+threw the cords away into the runnel.
+
+'That's emblematic,' he said. 'Anything's emblematic if you're on the
+look-out for emblems.'
+
+The canvas bale, being unrolled, displayed a bundle of gray blankets;
+a tent-pole, jointed like a fishing-rod, and in three pieces; an axe; a
+leather gun-case; a small gridiron; a small frying-pan; a tin quart pot,
+close-packed with loose cartridges; and a pair of folding trestles and
+a folding board for the construction of a little table. The canvas in
+which all these things had been packed afforded material for a tent,
+and the Solitary, with a seeming custom and alertness which no man
+would have argued from his aspect of an hour ago, began to set up his
+abiding-place in the narrow natural clearing he had chosen.
+
+In a while everything was tidy and ship-shape, and when he had made a
+fire, and had constructed a tripod of branches from which to hang the
+quart pot, newly filled with water from the sparkling runnel near at
+hand, the lonely man sat down and smoked again, letting his eyes rove
+here and there, and seeming to scan the scene before him with a dreamy
+interest. The pot boiled over, and the hissing of the wet embers awoke
+him from his contemplations. The brown portmanteau, being opened, proved
+to be filled with packets of provisions of various kinds. He made tea,
+broke into a tin of sardines and a packet of hard biscuits, and then sat
+munching and sipping, with his feet stretched wide apart, and his back
+against a tree--a picture of unthinking idleness.
+
+A rustle near at hand awoke attention, and he rolled his head lazily
+on one shoulder. The rustle drew nearer yet, and round the bend of the
+trail came a man in moleskin trousers, a gray shirt, and a shapeless
+felt hat, which seemed to have no colour but those lent to it by years
+of sun and rain.
+
+'Hillo, mate!' said the new man.
+
+'Hillo!' said the camper-out.
+
+'Come here by the last train, I suppose?'
+
+'By the last train.'
+
+'Got a mate with you?'
+
+'No.'
+
+The new-comer stared, and said 'Hm!' doubtfully. He looked from the
+other man's pale, clean-shaven face to his white hands.
+
+'New to this kind of game, ain't you? he asked, at length.
+
+'For a year or two,' the other answered.
+
+'I spotted the trail you made from the platform,' said the new-comer. 'I
+seen something had been dragged away. I was bound to follow.' There was
+a part apology in his tone, as if he knew himself unwelcome. 'You might
+have been Indians,' he added, 'or any kind of riff-raff.'
+
+'Quite so,' said the man of the camp. 'Not many of 'em hereabouts, I
+suppose?'
+
+'One or two in a year, perhaps. And harmless, what there is of 'em; but
+as thievish as a set of jackdaws.'
+
+'You in charge of the station?' asked the man of the camp, looking
+composedly down the canon and sipping at his tea.
+
+'Yes, I'm in charge.'
+
+'Alone?'
+
+'Alone? Yes.'
+
+'Fond of being alone?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'So am I.'
+
+'All right.' The man in the moleskin trousers and the shapeless hat
+laughed, lounged indeterminately for a minute, rolled his quid in his
+cheek, spat, wiped his bearded mouth with the back of a sunburnt hand,
+and laughed again. 'There's room enough for both of us. Good-night,
+mate.'
+
+'Good-night'
+
+The keeper of the station strolled away with a backward glance, and the
+man of the camp sipped his tea and stared straight before him. The sound
+of the retreating footsteps had died away, when the Solitary raised a
+powerful voice and cried, 'Hillo!'
+
+'Hillo!' came the answer, so muffled by the trees that it sounded as if
+from a considerable distance. The two men walked towards each other and
+met face to face. They had exchanged a greeting of good-night together,
+but the sun had some two hours to travel before it set upon the plains.
+Here it was out of sight already behind a monstrous hill, and although
+the dome of the sky was one translucent quiet splendour, dusk lay in the
+shadow of the mountain and the nearer shadows of the sombre pines.
+
+'I want to ask you,' said the camper-out, 'if you're a teetotaler?'
+
+'No,' said the station-keeper, 'not in particular.'
+
+'Any whisky about here just now?'
+
+'A gallon,' said the station-keeper; 'new in yesterday. Like a tot?'
+
+'No.'
+
+The word was snapped out savagely, and the station-keeper said 'Oh!'
+like an astonished echo.
+
+'It's not at all unlikely that I may ask you for some,' the camper-out
+went on.
+
+'You're sweetly welcome,' said the other; but he was waved down by an
+impatient gesture.
+
+'It's not at all unlikely that I may come and beg for it. You're not to
+give me any. You understand?' The station-keeper stared in the dusk, but
+made no answer or sign of answer. 'It's not at all unlikely that I may
+come and try to persuade you that this was a joke, and that I didn't
+mean it. I may offer you ten dollars for a drink--twenty, thirty, a
+hundred. I'm not to have it. And if you allow yourself to be persuaded
+to give me so much as one teaspoonful, no matter when or why, I'll shoot
+you next day, so sure as I am a living sinner.'
+
+'Oh, you will, will you?
+
+'I will, by God!'
+
+'That's all right,' said the station-keeper. 'You're a very pretty
+neighbour, you are, _by_ George!'
+
+'I am,' the other man assented--'a very pretty neighbour.'
+
+They parted there without another word. The man of the camp went back to
+his fire, and the man of the station to his shanty. Away below the camp
+the canon was dense with shade, but far off up the valley one rod of
+blinding sunlight struck the most distant peak, and made its snows
+dazzle on the eye. The snow-peak shone for half an hour, and then
+by imperceptible changes mellowed to a clear pale gold. Then by fine
+gradations it grew to a pale rose, a deep rose, a cold gray, a solemn
+purple. By this time the sky beyond the peak was a fiery glory. This
+faded in turn, first in a gush of liquid amber, then in soft green, then
+in blue, then violet. A lone star scintillated over the for crest, went
+out, relit itself, went out again, twinkled for a time, and at last
+shone steadfast with a diamond lustre.
+
+As the darkness gathered, the fire, which fora while gleamed more
+brightly, sank to a dull red, fading and brightening at the falling and
+rising of the wind, but growing with every minute less responsive to
+that soft influence.
+
+The stars twinkled over the sky in myriads. The man of the camp threw
+away the stump of his last cigarette, entered his tent, pulled off his
+boots, rolled himself in a blanket, and lay down, facing the distant
+peak and the one shining speck of a world above it.
+
+'You have made a hideous muddle of things.' he said at last--'a hideous
+muddle. Nothing to fear, for everything has happened. Nothing to hope
+for, for nothing can happen any more. Fortune wasted, friends wasted,
+genius wasted, heart wasted, life wasted. Ah, well! I ought to sleep
+to-night; I'm tired.'
+
+The torrent roared in the heart of the primeval silence. The peak and
+the star swam apart from each other in the solemn spaces of the sky.
+Under the tent, which showed ghostly in the starlight, the man lay
+silent for hours, but when next he spoke his voice was choked with
+tears.
+
+'Not that,' he said--'not that! I can endure the rest, but no
+repentance. To repent would drive me mad.'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Twice a day the mountains echoed to the clangour of the passing express
+train, and at intervals less settled and orderly to the slower rumble of
+luggage-trucks, laden or empty. The iron artery stretched from coast
+to coast, and here and there touched and fed a ganglion. To one living
+alone in those mountain fastnesses the roar and shriek and roll brought
+insistent memories of the world. No inmate of the oubliette could have
+been more lonely, and yet life was accessible, and even near.
+
+A month went by. The solitary man of the camp fished and shot, ate,
+drank, wandered, slept, and saw no face and heard no voice. He had run
+out of supplies, and having pencilled a note to that effect, had slipped
+it, with a five-dollar bill, under the door of the railside shanty. His
+wants had been supplied--they extended to tea and biscuit only--and he
+had taken care to be out of the way. Sometimes he heard a distant shot,
+and knew that the man of the shanty was afoot in search of game. Within
+a very little distance of the railway track sport could be had in
+plenty.
+
+Loneliness was broken at last. The rustle of boughs and the sound of
+steps and voices reached the Solitary's ears one day as he sat at his
+favourite outlook staring down the gorge. At the first note of one of
+the voices he started and changed colour. Nobody would have taken him
+for a man of cities now, with his beard of a month's growth, and his
+tanned hands and face. The open-air colour was the stronger for being
+new. With continued exposure it would fade from a red tan to a yellow.
+Deep as it was now, it paled at the first-heard sound of the approaching
+voice. The man threw a soul of anger and hatred into his ears and
+listened.
+
+'About a month?' the voice said 'Yes. I heard of his leaving Winnipeg on
+the twentieth. I went on to Vancouver and found he wasn't there. Then I
+got news of a fellow stopping off here, and, of course, it couldn't
+be anybody else. He's my brother-in-law, and I've got a letter for him
+which I'm pledged to put into his hands.'
+
+'Indeed, sir!'
+
+The answering voice was the voice of the man of the shanty. It sounded
+very rough and uncultured after the dandified drawl it followed, but it
+sounded manlier for the contrast, too.
+
+'He's a queer fellow,' said the first speaker; 'but this is the queerest
+trick I've known him play. Tell me, is he--is he drinking at all?'
+
+'No,' the other answered. 'He's not drinking. The first day he was here
+he promised to put a load of shot into me if ever I gave him liquor.'
+
+'Did he really? That's Paul all over. Oh, this the tent? Nobody here,
+apparently. Well, I must wait. I have a book with me, and I must spend
+four-and-twenty hours here in any case. Good-afternoon. Thank you.'
+
+The listener was within twenty yards, but invisible beyond the crowded
+undergrowth. The new arrival was perfectly attired, and handsome, in
+a supercilious, brainless way. He wore a Norfolk Jacket and
+knickerbockers, and his tanned boots were polished till they shone like
+glass. For a while he poked about the tent and its neighbourhood, and,
+having satisfied his curiosity, drew out a cigar-case from one pocket, a
+silver matchbox from another, and a paper-clad novel from a third. Then
+he disposed himself so as to command a view of the landscape, and began
+to smoke and read.
+
+He had occupied himself in this way for perhaps half an hour, when a
+sudden voice hailed him, and startled him so that he dropped his book.
+
+'Hillo, you there! Come here!'
+
+'Oh,'he said, 'is that you, Paul, old fellow? Where are you?'
+
+'Here,' said the voice ungraciously.
+
+The latest arrival made his way in the direction indicated, but though
+the voice had sounded not more than a score of yards away, he had to
+call out twice or thrice, and wait for an answer. The brush was dense
+and tangled, and he could have lost himself for a lifetime in it.
+
+'Oh, there you are, Paul! Upon my word, I shouldn't have known you.'
+
+'I heard you say you had a letter for me. I'd a good deal rather not
+have seen you, but since you are here you may as well discharge your
+commission, and when you've done that you can go.'
+
+'I've got a letter for you, Paul. It's from poor dear Madge, and I'm
+bound to say that I think she's beastly ill-used, and very unfortunate.'
+
+'Doubly unfortunate,' said the camper-out--'unfortunate in a brute of a
+husband and a cad of a brother. Give me the letter.'
+
+'Here it is, Paul. You may think what you like about me, of course, but
+I have travelled something like seven or eight thousand miles to find
+you.'
+
+'On Madge's money?' asked the other, balancing the letter in a careless
+grip between thumb and finger. 'Nobody asks you to stop to hear yourself
+described. You were a cad from your cradle; you were a liar as soon as
+you could learn to lisp, and a sponge from the happy hour when you found
+the first fool to lend you half a crown. You needn't wait, George, but
+so long as you are here I will do my best to tell you what you are. You
+are a fruitful theme, and I could be fluent for a week or two. Going?
+Well, luck go with you, of the sort you merit. I'd call you a cur, but
+there isn't a cur in all the world who wouldn't walk himself blind
+and lame to bite me in revenge for the insult I put upon him. Go--you
+infinitesimal! you epitome of unpitiable little shames!'
+
+The bearer of the letter, who had travelled so far for so curious a
+welcome, had found a beaten trail which led him back to the woodland
+road. He had gone a score of yards by this time; but the voice pursued
+him--level, heavy, sonorous, driven by full lungs.
+
+'Put your fingers in your ears, George, or I shall find a word to scorch
+you. You are the poorest thing in Nature's bag of samples. A well-bred
+woodlouse wouldn't employ you for a scavenger. If you shrank to your
+soul's dimensions you might wander lost for a century on the point of
+a cambric needle. You are the last rarefied essence of the
+contemptible--the final word of the genius of the mean.'
+
+This was not shouted, but was sent out in a steady trumpet-note
+that swelled fuller and fuller, like the voice of a great speaker in
+haranguing a clamorous audience, rising steadily, as if measured just
+to dominate clamour, and no more. In the pauses of his speech the
+camper-out had heard the noise of running feet. The sound seemed still
+faintly audible, though perhaps only fancy caught it. He sent out one
+clarion cry of 'Good-bye, George!' and surrendered himself to a fit of
+uncontrolled laughter. This coming to an end of sudden gravity, he took
+up the letter, which had fallen on the moss between his outstretched
+legs, and looked at the superscription.
+
+'Madge!' he said. 'Poor little Madge!'
+
+He put the envelope to his bristly lips and kissed it. Then he broke the
+seal and began to read:
+
+'My own darling Husband,
+
+'You _must_ have the enclosed, and George has promised not to rest until
+he finds you and lays it in your hands. The last lines your father ever
+wrote in this world----'
+
+'What?' he said aloud. 'What?
+
+'The last lines your father ever wrote in this world arrived on
+Saturday, the twentieth, and news of his death reached me by wire on
+Monday, the twenty-second.'
+
+'That's a big enough dose for one day,' he said. 'I can't stand
+any more.' He thrust the letter into his breast-pocket. 'Another
+impossibility. No prodigal's return to end _that_ story. Veal was never
+a favourite meat of mine. Lord! I could laugh to see what a mess I have
+made of things. I could cry if anybody else had made it, and had meant
+as well, and hoped as blindly.
+
+'Monday, the twenty-second. That was the day I came here. Strange it
+is--strange! I'd have sworn he was alive that night--that first night in
+the tent here. I seemed to feel him near me. We had that knack--the old
+governor and I--poor old chap! He could jog my mental elbow when I was
+a thousand miles away from him, and I could make him talk of me at any
+time.
+
+'Ghosts? No. Death is death, and there's an end of it. Ah!' He stood
+suddenly arrested. 'Six hours' difference between here and England. That
+explains it. His last wish was towards me. He loved nobody as he loved
+me, I think. Well, I shall vex him no more. His tribulation is over.
+
+'Why cant a wrong-doer have a hell of his own, and be saved from
+singeing innocent people? The smoke of my torment ascendeth, and even
+George goes coughing at the smell of brimstone. George would be much
+more comfortable if I had been virtuous--Madge would have more to lend
+him.
+
+'Now, if I had a bottle of whisky here, I'd put an end to this for an
+hour or two. But I haven't, and I must do something. I must drug this
+down. Bodily labour.' He laid his open palm on the knotted rind of the
+big tree against which he had leaned his back whilst he read the first
+phrases of the letter. 'You'll do as well as anything. It took many a
+score of years to bring you here, but now you must come down. You'll
+sleep in the gorge before I have done with you, old piny monster, three
+hundred feet below your roots.'
+
+He walked to the tent, and returning jacketless, axe in hand, fell upon
+the tree with a measured frenzy. The sun was still high, and before he
+had been at work ten minutes the sweat poured from his brow like rain.
+He paused to breathe, and to survey the gash he had made in the side
+of the tree. Compared with the girth of the forest giant, it looked the
+merest trifle, but he nodded gaspingly.
+
+'You'll sleep in the gorge before I have done with you, you old goliath
+of your tribe. I shall have you down.'
+
+He laboured with dogged fury. His hands blistered at the unaccustomed
+task. The helve of the axe was stained with blood, and clung to his
+grasp as if his palms were glued. His blows grew altogether ineffectual
+The axe fell sideways often, and at such times the blow jarred him to
+the spine. 'You will come down,' he said, 'if I die for it' He went back
+to the tent, and casting himself on the turf before it, laved his hands
+in the ice-cold mountain-stream. In half an hour he returned to his
+task, and worked at it until he could no longer lift a hand. Even then,
+as he walked brokenly away, he turned with an angry murmur:
+
+'I'll have you down!'
+
+He built his fire, and brewed and sipped his tea and munched his rations
+in great weariness that night, and it was earlier than usual when he
+rolled himself in his blanket and lay down. But though he ached with
+fatigue from neck to heel, there was no sleep for him. He seemed to hang
+suspended over a great lake of slumber, and to hold, in spite of his own
+will, to a bar which magnetized his burning palms. He had but to release
+the bar to fall deep into oblivion, but his grasp was fixed, and he
+had no power to loose it. So, after many hours of tumbling this way and
+that, he arose, and fed his fire with dry chips until it flamed; and
+then, in alternate gushes of light and darkness, he read his father's
+letter.
+
+'Hendricks has just left me, and I succeeded in getting from him at the
+last a plain statement of his opinion. I may last a month longer, but
+he thinks it unlikely. I may go in a week. A chill, or a shock, or any
+little trifle may precipitate the change, and make an end at any moment.
+I can write for a few minutes at a time, and I am trying for Paul's sake
+to say one or two things which will make my future task more likely of
+success....
+
+'I was fifty when my father died. I had been bred in the strictest
+Calvinistic school; but my heart had revolted against the creed, and
+from the time when I was five-and-twenty my mind had rejected it with
+equal decision and disdain. I looked for no other faith or form of
+faith. At the centre of the negation in which I lived there was this one
+thought: There may, for anything I can tell, be a great First Cause. I
+cannot know. I can neither affirm nor deny, for the whole question is
+beyond my understanding. But this at least seems clear: If there be a
+God at all, He is far away. He is great beyond our dreaming--distant
+beyond our dreaming. If there be a scheme in the universe, there is at
+least no care for the atoms which compose it. God sits far withdrawn,
+beyond our prayers, beyond our tears and fears. This fretful insect
+of an hour, who cannot even measure the terms he uses, speaks of
+the Eternal, the Immutable, and strives by his prayers to change Its
+purposes. I am writing now by lamplight, and the agonies of the singed
+moths whose little bodies encrust my lamp-glass do not move me from my
+purpose. I realize their anguish at this moment with a deep pity, but
+I do not stay to save them. My heavier purpose will not wait for them.
+Thus I dreamed it was, likening smallest things to the greatest, with
+God.
+
+'At my father's death a change began to work in my opinions. I had
+convinced myself that this life was all that man enjoyed or suffered,
+but I began to be conscious that I was under tutelage. I began--at first
+faintly and with much doubting--to think that my father's spirit and my
+own were in communion. I knew that he had loved me fondly, and to me he
+had always seemed a pattern of what is admirable in man. Now he seemed
+greater, wiser, milder. I grew to believe that he had survived the
+grave, and that he had found permission to be my guide and guardian. The
+creed which slowly grew up in my mind and heart, and is now fixed there,
+was simply this: that as a great Emperor rules his many provinces, God
+rules the universe, employing many officers--intelligences of loftiest
+estate, then intelligences less lofty; less lofty still beneath these,
+and at the last the humbler servants, who are still as gods to us, but
+within our reach, and His messengers and agents. Then God seemed no
+longer utterly remote and impossible to belief, and I believed. And
+whether this be true or false, I know one thing: this faith has made me
+a better man than I should have been without it My beloved father, wise
+and kind, has seemed to lead me by the hand. I have not dared in the
+knowledge of his sleepless love to do many things to which I have been
+tempted. I have learned from him to know--if I know anything--that
+life from its lowest form is a striving upward through uncounted and
+innumerable grades, and that in each grade something is learned that
+fits us for the next, or something lost which has to be won back again
+after a great purgation of pain and repentance.
+
+'It is three days since I began to write, and I am so weak that I can
+barely hold the pen. Send this to Paul. He has gone far wrong. He will
+come back again to the right. I have asked that I may guide him, and my
+prayer has been granted. From the hour at which I quit this flesh until
+he joins me my work is appointed me, and I shall not leave him. Goodbye,
+dear child. Be at peace, for all will yet be well.
+
+'When Paul sees these last words of mine, he will know that I am with
+him.'
+
+
+The letter ended there, and the reader's dazzled eyes looked into the
+darkness. One flickering flame hovered above the embers of the fire and
+seemed to leave them and return, to die and break to life again. At last
+it fluttered upward and was gone.
+
+The runnel, like the greater stream below, had many voices. It chattered
+light-hearted trifles, lamented child-like griefs, and sobbed itself to
+sleep over and over and over. In the black canon the river bellowed its
+rage and triumph and despair. The shadows of the night were deep, and
+silence brooded within them, and the ears thrilled and tingled to the
+monitions of its voiceless sea.
+
+'Father!' he whispered.
+
+The night gave no response, but the answer sounded in the lonely man's
+heart:
+
+'I am here.'
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+In the broad daylight it was not easy to believe that the experience of
+the night-time was more than an excitement of the nerves. The tide of
+habitual conviction set strongly against a superstitious fancy. None the
+less the Solitary spent many hours in tender and remorseful musings over
+the lost father, and all day long he wondered at the voice which had
+seemed to answer him.
+
+'It would be well for me, perhaps,' he said, when he had spent
+two-thirds of the day under the spell of these clear recollections--'it
+would be well for me, perhaps, if I could think it true.'
+
+An inward voice said, as if with deliberate emphasis, 'It is true.'
+
+The words did not seem to be his own, and the thought was not his
+own, and he was startled, almost wildly. But he had been much given to
+introspection. He was accustomed to the study of his own mind's working,
+and the inward voice impressed him less than if he had been a man of
+simpler intellect. The intelligence of man plays many curious tricks
+upon itself, and he was ready with explanations. He pored upon these,
+turned them over, criticised them, sat secure in them.
+
+The inward voice said 'Paul,' and nothing more. No call had sounded on
+the waking ear, and yet an echo seemed to live in the air, as if a real
+voice had spoken. His heart thrilled and his breast ached with a great
+longing. He subdued himself, sitting with bowed head and closed eyes,
+his chin sunk upon his folded hands. There was a bitter pain in his
+throat.
+
+'No,' he said half aloud, as if he had need to form his thoughts in
+words; 'it is all at an end, dear old dad It was well for you that you
+died with that good hope in your mind It shed a ray of peace on your
+heart in the last dark hour. It would be well for me if I could think
+that you were here.. I could stand the pain of it I could bear, I think,
+to turn my whole life's stream back upon itself if that would bring you
+peace. I could bear to repent if my repentance could avail But you are
+gone into the great dark. You will be sad no more and glad no more. I
+broke your heart, and you tried to patch it with that futile hope. And
+you were not the man to ask me to be a coward, and a liar to my own
+soul. I will keep what little rag of manliness I have.'
+
+The inward voice seemed to say 'Wait.'
+
+'It would be easy to go mad,' he said, rising wearily. '"They rest from
+their labours, and their works do follow them."'
+
+He had wandered a mile or two from his tent, along the track, and now
+turned his footsteps home again. The afternoon light was mellowing. A
+great range of hills, with a line of cloud shining across the breast of
+it like a baldric of silver, lifted parcel-coloured masses of white and
+violet into a rolling billowy glory of cloud which half obscured and
+half relieved them. The sky above was of an infinite purity. He stood
+and looked, until his heart yearned.
+
+The yearning spoke itself in words which had been familiar since
+childhood:
+
+'"Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at
+rest!"'
+
+'Old earth,' he said, 'why is it? You seem to long for me. You seem to
+stretch out hands to me, as if you would say, "Sleep here!" We belong
+to one another, I suppose. This flesh and bone, this breathing, thinking
+apparatus, grew out of the slime of you, old world, and will go back to
+your dust and flourish in grass and flower, and float in cloud and fall
+in rain. You have hidden in your green breast all the millions who have
+gone before me. Fecund mother! kind grave! And you, too, for all so
+green and kisty as you look, you are dying. Your life is longer than
+mine, but you are no Immortal. Your hills roll down to your valleys.
+Every stream that tumbles from their heights wears away a little. The
+light snow and lighter air are heavy on those heights of steel, and will
+make them into dust at last. Your inward fires will cool, and the air
+that clothes you like a delicate robe will shrink and vanish, and leave
+you naked to the sun. I shall come to your bosom and be quiet, and you
+will find the bourne of death likewise, and we shall swing together
+round and round And the fires of the sun will cool, and you will go
+spinning in blackness, and split in silent explosions of cold in the
+blind dark. Dying heart, beating strong in full manhood! dying 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 vanity.
+
+He was walking and crying in an old-fashioned village street, crying
+because his fat small thighs were chafing one another. It was Sunday,
+or a holiday, for his father was in a tall silk hat and black broadcloth
+and high collar, and a satin stock which fastened with a shiny buckle
+high up in the neck behind. His father stooped and lifted him, and
+carried him all the way to an old house with three front-doors, and
+porches over the doors, and a cage with two doves in it hanging on the
+lichened wall. There was a hedged garden opposite the house, with four
+poplars in the hedgerow. Their tops went right into the blue. Inside the
+old house was an old gentleman who was called Uncle. Round the room he
+sat in were hung a number of fiddles in green-baize bags. How he had
+learned what the bags held the child could not tell, but he knew.
+The old gentleman took him on his knee, and allowed him to touch his
+whiskers, which were crisp and soft, and snipped pieces of white paper
+into the shapes of trees and animals and houses, with a little pair of
+scissors. He had blue veins on the back of his white hands, and little
+cords the like of which were not on the child's, as examination proved.
+This was his first memory of any house which was not home.
+
+There he first saw a piano. It was open, and he beat the keys, sounding
+now one note at a time and now two or three together. This was a
+fascinating exercise, but he was bidden to desist from it, and was given
+a picture-book to look at It was full of wiry-looking steel plates of
+men in cauldrons, and on crucifixes, and on racks, and bound to stakes
+in fires. He remembered it as Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs,' but by a later
+knowledge.
+
+There was a well in a yard, with a rope and a windlass, and an old
+wooden bucket all over trailing green mosses. Off the yard there was a
+blacksmith's shop, with a disused anvil and disused tools in it, and a
+cold hearth covered with scattered slack and iron filings. A dog, whose
+chain allowed him to come within a yard of the door of this workshop,
+woke up at the clank of the tools and barked. The child cried until his
+mother came and took him away with some show of angry impatience, not
+with his father's gentleness. He knew her for his mother, of course, but
+this was his first remembrance of her.
+
+It was baking-day, and so it could not have been a Sunday. In a big
+'jowl' of earthenware--that was the local word for it--a batch of dough
+was set before a fire to rise. It had a clean cloth spread over it, and
+the dough had been slashed across and across with a knife. Somebody said
+the sign of the cross was made to keep the devil out of the bread. There
+was a vague wonder at that, but it soon died. A portion of the dough
+was used to make what were called 'rough-and-ready cakes.' Dripping was
+rolled into the dough, and it was sprinkled with sugar and currants.
+Then it was pulled into all manner of rough shapes, so as to bake with
+crisp edges, and was put on a greased dripping-pan into an oven. The
+cakes were served hot with new milk, and made a regal feast.
+
+It grew dark, which for summer-time was a new experience. The child,
+tired, but wakeful, stood at the door in fear of the dog. Suddenly he
+roused the household with screams of joy.
+
+'Mother! mother! Look what I've found!'
+
+There was a rush and a swirl of petticoats. The infant had seen the
+stars for the first time, and had some trouble in explaining the nature
+of his find. When it was known that he had discovered the solar system
+and its neighbouring fragment of the universe, there was a laugh, and he
+was left alone, humiliated.
+
+'I have made many equally valuable and original discoveries since then,'
+said Paul Armstrong, and so went on staring down the canon, seeing
+nothing of what lay before him, but beholding his child-self so clearly
+that he seemed to be living over again the life of forty years ago.
+
+The child was shy, dreamy, sensitive, inventive, and a liar. He and
+his brother Dick were together walking in the shabby High Street, and
+talking about cricket.
+
+'I'll bet you haven't seen what I've seen,' said Paul. He was seven
+years old by now, breeched in corduroys, which had had time to grow
+rusty. The middle-aged man, sitting at his tent-door, smelt the odour of
+the new cords, and heard their disgusting whistle as he moved his
+limbs in them for the first time. Only the poorest boys went clothed in
+corduroy, and Paul and brother Dick were bitterly lowered in their own
+esteem when they were forced by motherly economy into that badge of
+social servitude. 'I'll bet you haven't seen what I've seen.'
+
+'What have you seen? asked Dick.
+
+He was rather a fatuous boy, with round, innocent eyes, easily opening
+at tales of marvel, and a temptation to a liar.
+
+'Why, when I was in Scotland three years ago with father,' Paul began,
+'I saw the Highlanders play cricket.' He had never in his life been a
+mile away from his native parish, and Dick knew that as well as he did,
+but it made no difference. 'They wore kilts, and father wore a kilt, and
+had a feather in his bonnet, and top-boots like Robin Hood, all loose
+about the tops, and a bow and arrow. And he smoked a cigar, and gave me
+a whole lot of vesuvians to strike by myself behind a tent. You could
+smell vesuvians and cigars and sunshiny trod-on grass everywhere.'
+
+'Tell us about the Highlanders,' said Dick.
+
+'They was all ten foot high,' said Paul. 'They wouldn't have 'em in the
+eleven without they was ten foot high.'
+
+Dick said that stood to reason.
+
+'And they played in their kilts, and they didn't wear pads, and they
+had their bats all made of iron, and the ball was iron, too. It was a
+cannon-ball, and they fired it out of a cannon, and the wickets was a
+mile and a half apart--no, a mile and a quarter--and one man hit the
+ball, and the other men shouted, "Run it out!" and he ran sixty-four
+runs. Then he dropped down stone-dead, and Mr. Murchison read the
+funeral service.'
+
+Then the talk drifted. Next Sunday the Rev. Roderic Murchison, M.A.,
+read out from the pulpit a text which gave over all liars to fire and
+brimstone. Paul went quaking all day. Dick and he slept together in a
+gaunt attic chamber. Mary, their sister, twenty years Paul's elder, saw
+them to bed, put them through a rough form of prayer, and took away the
+candle. Dick, with nothing on his conscience, went to sleep. Paul lay
+and sweated, dreading fire, and wondering with open-eyed horror, 'Why
+brimstone?' and imagining extraordinary terrors from its addition.
+At last conscience would have no Nay, and brimful of fear and
+contrition--for the one was as real as the other--he woke up Dick in
+the black hollow of the night This was hard work, but he was bent on
+self-purgation, and would not confess until Dick was really wide awake.
+
+'Dick!' he said, gripping his brother in the dark and straining him in
+his childish arms. 'Dick! Oh, Dick, I've been a liar, and I daresn't
+go to sleep. Do you remember what I said about the Highlanders last
+Thursday?'
+
+'Blow the Highlanders!' said Dick. 'What did ye wake _me_ up for?'
+
+'It wasn't true, Dick,' the penitent whimpered. 'I never saw a
+Highlander, and father didn't take me to Scotland with him. It was all
+made up.'
+
+'I know that,' said Dick. 'You _are_ a fool to wake a chap up in the
+dark to tell him that.'
+
+That was the child's first remembered penitence and confession. The
+man remembered how he had sobbed himself to sleep. Why had he lied, and
+_was_ a portion his in the lake of fire and brimstone, and what was
+the good of being repentant and confessing, and being called a fool for
+one's pains?
+
+When the childish Paul came out of the kitchen-door into that
+three-sided well of a brick-paved yard, and walked towards the
+printing-office at the far end of the narrow strip of garden, the first
+door beyond the pump-trough led him to a flight of stairs. The flight of
+stairs, dirty and littered, mounted to a lumber-room, where there were
+great piles of waste-paper, refuse from the shop and office. There were
+many torn and battered old books here, and most of them were deserving
+of the neglect into which they had fallen. The father had bought old
+books literally by the cart-load at auction, and had weeded from the
+masses of rubbish such things as promised to be saleable. The rest
+were Paul's prey, and there were scraps of romance here and there, and
+fugitive leaves of Hone's 'Everyday Book,' and the _Penny Magazine_,
+with dingy woodcuts. One inestimable bundle of leaves unbound held the
+greater part of 'Peregrine Pickle,' the whole of 'Robinson Crusoe,' and
+part of 'The Devil on Two Sticks.' Brother Bob, dead and gone these many
+years, had once kept pigeons in that lumber-room, and had driven a hole
+in the wall, so that the birds might have free going out and in. This
+was one of the family remembrances. Before there had been so many mouths
+to fill and so many small figures to be clothed, there had been room
+in the Armstrong household for some things which were not wholly
+utilitarian. This keeping of pigeons was, as it were, a link with a
+golden past, a bright thread in the tapestry of the bygone, which hung
+on the eye of imagination in contrast with the sordid present, where few
+of the threads were bright except to the inexhaustible fancy of a child,
+who can see brightness almost anywhere.
+
+The lumber-room had many memories for the dreamer in the tent-door. He
+was often banished there for punishment, and he sometimes confessed to
+faults which were not his, if they were not of too dark a dye, in the
+hope of being sent thither. There he would grub amongst the mouldy
+refuse of the place, and would find treatises of forgotten divines on
+Daniel and the end of the world, and translations of Ovid on the Art
+of Love sadly mutilated by rats, and nautical almanacs of a long bygone
+date, and much other doubtful treasure.
+
+The mother came into the brick-paved yard and shrilled 'Paul! Paul lay
+quiet. The voice called up and down, and was lost in the recesses of
+the heaped timber in the yard which lay beside the ill-kempt strip of
+garden. The hedge which had once divided the neighbouring domains was
+broken down in many places, and Paul and his brother played often on the
+timber-stacks, and in the aromatic groves of sawn planks which inclined
+towards each other in row on row, making an odorous cloistered shade,
+excellent for enacted memories of Chingachgook and Uncas and the
+Pathfinder. There was a sawpit in the yard, a favourite hiding-place for
+the boys, and the turpentiny scent of fresh sawdust had always been a
+thing to conjure with in the Solitary's memory. The smell of printer's
+ink which hung about the dowdy, untidy, bankrupt printing-office had
+a hint of it. Years afterwards and years ago in the studio of the
+President of the Belgian Academy, when Paul was famous and on easy terms
+with famous people, a servant uncorked a tin of turpentine to clean his
+master's palette, and the sawpit yawned again, and every broken brick in
+the floor of the old office showed so clear that he could have drawn
+the finest crevice. The odour was in his nostrils now as he sat at the
+tent-door, and he did not dream that it sweated from the sun-smitten
+pines. It was all memory to his fancy, and the voice went shrilling
+'Paul!' among the timber-stacks, and was lost in the cavernous shed at
+the far-end of the yard. Then everything went quiet for an hour, and
+Paul made acquaintance with the poverty-stricken artist who could not
+take his mistress to the ball because she had no stockings fit to go
+in, and who hit on the expedient of painting stockings on her legs. How
+simply and innocently comic the episode was to the child's mind, to be
+sure! and how harmless were the naughtiest adventures exposed under the
+lifted roofs when the lame devil waved his crutch from the top of the
+steeple!
+
+But in the full tide of this retired joy Paul hears a step at the bottom
+of the lumber-room stairs, and knows it for his mother's. She is coming
+here, and there is no hiding-place for anything bigger than a rat. The
+motherly temper is sharp, and the motherly hand is heavy. He has been
+called and has not answered--a crime deserving punishment, and sure to
+earn it. The step grows nearer and trouble more assured. Suddenly a ray
+of hope darts through him, and he feigns sleep. His heart labours,
+but he keeps his breath regular by a great effort. Mother gazes for a
+minute, and goes away on tiptoe. There is quiet for five minutes, and
+Paul is back in fairyland. But mother is here again on tiptoe, and the
+voice of doom sounds on his ear.
+
+'I thought you was foxing, you little beast!'
+
+Then Paul takes his thrashing as well as he can, aiming to receive most
+of it on his elbows, and is in bitter disgrace for days and days. The
+phenomenally guilty and degraded young ruffian who _acted_ a lie!---a
+far viler thing, it would seem, than to speak one!
+
+This is the worst of the household, to the Solitary's mind, that all
+combine in prolonged reprobation for any crime of his. He has no memory
+for Dick's offences or Jack's or David's; but Dick and Jack and David
+are unforgetting, and the girls sniff unutterable holiness and contempt.
+He knows he is a liar, and he knows that liars have their portion in
+that awful lake, but he is high-spirited and fanciful, and he forgets,
+sealing his doom weekly at the least, and making it more sure. This
+reputation of liar began when Wombwell's Menagerie of Wild Beasts first
+visited the parish, and the neighbourhood of lions and tigers so flushed
+his imagination that he saw them everywhere. He came home one day with
+a story of a tiger running away with the shop-shutters of a neighbouring
+grocer on his back. He was chastised for this gratuitous unwarrantable
+yarn, and stuck to it Perhaps he had dreamed it and believed it true,
+but on that point memory was silent. Anyway it was fixed and decided
+that he was a liar, and 'A liar we can ne'er believe, though he
+should speak the thing that's true.' So nobody believed Paul under any
+conditions, not even when truth was crystalline.
+
+He was a little older, a very little older, and he lay in bed one
+moonlight night in summer. He had been to chapel that Sunday evening,
+and the Rev. Roderic Murchison had preached a sermon from the text, 'To
+depart and to be with Christ, which is far better.' Paul's small soul
+was filled to the brim with a sort of yearning peace. The moon yearned
+at him through the uncurtained window of the bare attic chamber, and he
+longed back to it. Oh how sweet, how sweet to pass to peace for ever, to
+lie asleep for ever, with the grass and the daisies for a counterpane,
+and yet to be somewhere and wideawake and happy! 'Suffer little children
+to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of
+heaven.' Paul was of the kingdom for a time, but he had the blundering
+ill-luck to mention it. He put his arms round Dick, who lay awake there,
+and he cried and said good-bye, and told Dick that he was going to die
+and be an angel. And in his heart he forgave Dick--nebulously but with
+sincerity--not particularizing things, but offering plenary grace for
+all offences. And Dick took fright and ran with bare legs projecting
+from his scanty nightshirt, and blubbered that Paul was dying--that he
+said so, that he was sure of it. And Paul, listening at the top of the
+stairs, heard the news given and forgave everybody, and went back to bed
+again and was filled with inexpressible joy of assured longing. The
+good mother came upstairs carrying Dick, who had been solaced with
+unaccustomed supper of bread and treacle--he was sticky and crumby with
+it hours afterwards when Paul still lay crying--and she gave Paul such a
+hiding for his heartless wickedness as he had never had in all his
+days till then. It was not the pain of the flogging, though he had been
+chastened with a liberal hand, that kept him in tears throughout that
+wretched night. It was the bitter sense of injustice, for Paul had
+imputed his dream to himself for holiness, and had believed so truly and
+had meant so well.
+
+And the matter did not end there Paul had slept on his trouble and had
+forgotten it, as children can. He was stripped to the waist, and was
+taking his morning wash at the sink in the back-kitchen when his father
+came, carrying in his left hand an instrument called the 'tawse,' a
+broad flat leathern strap, cut into strips at one end. The strips had
+been hardened in the fire, and the 'tawse 'was a holy horror to the
+boys, who saw it often and were threatened with it sometimes, but who
+had felt it never. Armstrong the father came in pale and gray, his hands
+quivering, and he gave Paul a little sermon. The ineradicable Ayrshire
+accent shook out in his voice more strongly than common, for he was an
+idle dreamer, and a man who hated to see pain, and to whom it was an
+agony to inflict it.
+
+'This will hurt me far more than it will hurt you, my lad, said
+Armstrong senior; and Paul, by a swift, sidelong movement of the mind,
+decided that he had been born a liar because his father was one before
+him.
+
+Then the father expanded upon the enormity of his wickedness, and told
+him how he had shamefully trifled with the thought of death, which was
+the most serious of all things, and how in his vanity he had tried to
+alarm his brother, and how this evil lying spirit must be beaten out of
+him. Paul was silent, for how could he explain? And the kindly father,
+who had had to work himself up to this cold-blooded severity, went half
+hysterical when he had once begun, and overdid the thing. Paul's
+flesh ached and stung and quivered on his bones for days. A fortnight
+afterwards, when he went to bathe, having forgotten his flogging, his
+stripes were seen, and a schoolmate christened him Tiger on account of
+them. To that day there were people who knew him as Tiger Armstrong,
+though they had forgotten the reason of the nickname.
+
+This was one of the inconveniences of having a reputation. There were
+more such doleful comedies in the lonely man's mind as he looked down
+the gorge.
+
+The scenes came back as if they were enacted before him. The old
+eight-day dock ticked in its recess; the fire rustled and dropped a
+cinder; the cat purred on the hearth; Paul sat reading, absorbed, and
+yet in memory he knew of the cat and the dock and the fire, and even of
+a humming fly somewhere, and a gleam of sunshine on the weather-stained
+whitewash of the wall outside.
+
+In came Mrs. Armstrong, with the little household servant at her heels,
+and laid something on the ledge of the old clock face. She was an
+uncommonly tall woman, and had a knack of putting things on high out of
+other people's reach.
+
+'That's for the potatoes,' she said; 'run and get 'em as soon as ever
+you've peeled the turnips.'
+
+'Yes, ma'am,' said the girl; and they both went out together.
+
+Two or three minutes later Paul went out. His father sat behind the
+counter of the shop, and Paul was afraid that if he went that way he
+would be seized upon and compelled to take his place. So he ran up the
+garden, climbed a wall or two, and dropped into Badger's field. He had
+not gone twenty yards when he found a halfpenny lying on the grass. He
+laid hands on it, and made for the confectioner's, where he expended
+it on a sickly sweet called 'paper-suck'--a treacly, sticky abomination
+with a spiral of old newspaper twined about it Brother Dick appeared
+by chance, and shared the treat. Paul at this time had taken to making
+verses on his own account, incited by a great deal of miscellaneous
+reading. This was an exercise which demanded quiet and retirement, and
+he got away into the fields, and, lying face downwards on the grass,
+gave himself over hand and foot to fancy. It was quite late in the
+afternoon when appetite brought him to himself. He had forgotten his
+dinner, but relying on his ability to filch something, he walked home
+with a light heart He marched innocently through the open door of the
+shop.
+
+'Paul!' His father stopped him, his spectacles tipped up into his white
+hair, and his gray eyes half hidden under eyebrows like a shaggy
+Scotch deer-hound's. The portrait of Sir Walter's 'Maida' had a strong
+suggestion of the Scottish face, wistful, affectionate, and full of
+simple sagacity. Just now the gray eyes looked doom. Paul knew he had
+done something awful, and felt guilty, though he knew nothing as yet
+of the charge against him. 'What ha' ye dune wi' the threepenny-bit ye
+stole this morning?'
+
+'What threepenny-bit?' said Paul. 'I haven't seen no threepenny-bit,
+father.'
+
+The verse he hammered out in his lonely moments was grammatical, because
+his exemplars would have it so; but to have been grammatical in common
+speech would have seemed like a pedantry.
+
+'The threepenny-bit your mother put on the clock-ledge, ye pelferin'
+vag'bond!' said his father sternly.
+
+'I never seen it,' Paul declared.
+
+'There, there!' said Armstrong; 'it comes natural to lie, and I'll not
+tempt ye. Not another word. Ye'll go to your chamber, and ye'll stop
+there till ye're in the mind to confess. There's the fruits of
+your crime marked on your lips this minute, and Dick saw ye at the
+sweet-stuff shop. Away with ye, before I lay hands on ye!'
+
+Paul's hob-nailed boots went lingeringly up the uncarpeted stairs to
+the attic room, and there he spent the long, long afternoon. There was
+nothing to do, nothing to think about, nothing to read. He stared at the
+tinman's shop opposite, and at the cheesemonger's fat widow, and at the
+window of the Berlin wool shop next door to the cheesemonger's, and
+when a customer went in he speculated idly on his purchase. He was very
+hungry and lonely and dull, and the three other attic rooms which were
+open to him were as uninteresting as his own. Evening came on, and he
+seemed to be forgotten. He took off his boots, and crept to the lower
+flight of stairs and listened. Everything was going on just as it would
+have done if he had not been alone and miserable and martyred Well, he
+could starve and die and go to heaven, and then perhaps they would all
+be sorry, and discover some little good in him. Evening deepened into
+night, and still he sat there. A little insect behind the wall-paper
+against which he leaned his disconsolate head ticked and ticked like a
+watch. Paul had heard of the death-watch, and this, of course, was
+it, and its token was, of course, of his own untimely end. He wept
+luxuriously.
+
+By-and-by he got up, and crept on tiptoe past the door of the best
+bedroom, which stood a little open, and invited him inwards by the
+mysterious gleam on the ceiling and the thrilling shadows of the great
+four-poster with its dusky hangings--a family heirloom, hint of far-off
+family prosperity, big enough for a hearse and quite as gloomy to look
+at. A heavy, solid mahogany chest of drawers stood near the window, and
+Paul, aided by the gaslights glistening amongst the polished tinware
+in the shop opposite, went through every drawer. His hands lighted on
+something done up in tissue-paper--an oblong parcel. He investigated
+it, and it turned out to be a big sponge loaf. He had seen one like it
+before, and guessed that it came as a gift from the old-maid cousins
+at the farm. He pinched off a bit from one of the bottom corners, and
+nibbled it He had not known till then how hungry he was, and the cake
+was more than delicious. He pinched off more, and was frightened to
+find how much he had taken. Detection was sure, and who but he could
+be suspected? Nothing could save him now, and though he had never heard
+either proverb, he acted on both--'In for a penny, in for a pound,' and
+'As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.' A voice and a footstep below
+startled him, and he fled guiltily. Now he was a thief, and then he was
+a beleaguered citizen, forced to make excursions by night, and live
+at risk of life on the provisions of the foe. He lay on the bed, and
+watched the lights on the ceiling until the cheesemonger's shop and the
+tinman's were closed; then he went to sleep, and in a while Dick came
+and awoke him.
+
+'You'll get nothing to eat till you confess,' said Dick, 'and then
+you'll get a licking.'
+
+'Then I shall die,' said Paul. 'I shan't confess what I never done.'
+
+He undressed and got into bed, and was more of a Christian martyr than
+he had ever been before. He slept fairly well, all things considered;
+but when in the morning his father's deep, asthmatic cough sounded on
+the stairs, he felt as if his heart had slipped through his spine and
+had dropped upon the floor. He sat up in bed as his father entered the
+room.
+
+'Well, sir, are ye in any mind to tell the truth yet?'
+
+'I didn't take it, father; I never seen it' 'Vary good; yell just stay
+there.'
+
+Dick, with his hair staring from his head in all directions, pulled
+on his boots and trousers, and, gathering his other belongings in both
+arms, went off to make his toilet in the back-kitchen. The heavy day
+began for Paul, and when he had dressed he prowled disconsolately about
+his prison limits. In the ceiling of one of the back rooms there was
+a trap-door, and he began to wonder if he could open it There was a
+crippled three-legged table in the next apartment, and two old chairs,
+the rush bottoms of which had given way. He lugged these beneath the
+trap and mounted. He had two or three tumbles, and anything but a cat
+or a boy would have broken its neck several times over; but at last he
+succeeded in forcing the trap, and scrambled up. The joists of the roof
+and the rough inside of the slates were all he saw at first; but in a
+while he discerned a solid-looking shadow in the near distance, and made
+towards it. It proved to be a small table, and on it, covered thick with
+dust, were a broken jug, a broken cup, and a broken table-knife. What
+brought these things in so curious a place Paul never knew; but there
+they were, and the spot in an instant was a robber's cave, and full
+of the most palpitating and delicious fears. He seized the broken
+table-knife as a weapon, and dashed back towards the trap-door. His
+movement towards the table must have taken him over some protected
+place--some region where a wall or beam made the lath-and-plaster
+flooring sound beneath his feet. But in his backward dash he missed
+this. The thin and fragile stuff gave way beneath him, and he came
+through with a tearing crash, and fell on the floor of the room beneath
+with a shock which snapped his teeth together and left him dizzy and
+half stunned. There was a big rent in the ceiling, and the floor was
+covered for a square yard or two with hairy plaster and fragments of
+wood.
+
+Paul thought at first that he was broken all over, but, coming to gather
+himself together, found himself whole. He transferred the crippled
+table and the chairs to their original places, and stowed away the
+knife between the cords and the mattress of his bed. Then he listened
+dreadfully to discover if the noise of his fall had awakened any
+answering commotion below stairs. Growing easy on this point, he began
+to be aware that he was hungry again, and bethought him of the remnant
+of the sponge loaf. Nothing much worse than had already happened
+could befall him, and after brief temptation he kicked off his unlaced
+hobnails and stole downstairs. With some such vague idea of disguising
+crime as a thievish monkey might have had, he packed up a pair of
+neatly folded towels in the paper which had once held the loaf, and so
+retreated to his prison. All day long the familiar noises of the
+house, exaggerated into importance by his own loneliness, went on. Feet
+travelled here and there, voices called, the tingling shop-bell rang.
+The little servant came to make the bed, and treated him with the
+disdain which befitted a convicted criminal. In a while she went away,
+and left him lonelier than before. Even disdain had something of human
+companionship in it.
+
+And now, hunger's pangs having been fairly well appeased by the remnant
+of the sponge loaf, Paul had time to surrender himself to the thought
+of impending starvation. He convinced himself that a boy could die of
+starvation in two days. Morrow at noontide would see him stark and cold.
+He grew newly holy at this reflection, and forgave everybody afresh with
+flattering tears. It became a sort of essential that he should leave a
+memorial on the wall of the cell in which he was about to perish, and
+so he got out the broken knife from under the mattress, and carved a big
+cross in the papered plaster of the wall. It was less artistic in its
+outline than he could have hoped; but its symbolism, at least, was
+clear, and he wept and exulted as he worked at it.
+
+The heavy day went by and the heavy night, and he began to be really
+hollow, and to believe with less than his original sense of comfort
+that his end was near. With the morning came his father with yesterday's
+question. Paul broke into wild tears and protests. He wasn't, wasn't,
+wasn't guilty.
+
+'Vary good. Yell just stay there.'
+
+Dick, touched by the agony of despair with which Paul threw himself upon
+the bed, advised surrender.
+
+'What's a lickin'?' said Dick. 'Have it over.'
+
+'Oh, Dick,' cried Paul, clipping at the air between them, 'plead for
+me!'
+
+'Not me,' said Dick, who was less literary than Paul, and misunderstood
+the unfamiliar word--'bleed for yourself.'
+
+And again the heavy day went on, and Paul wept and wept alone. But it
+happened that this was scouring day; and a sort of wooden fender which
+fenced in the foot of the eight-day clock being moved, the missing bit
+of silver was found behind it, and the martyr was released. There were
+no apologies; but Paul was told to clean himself, and was whispered by
+Dick that there was a tea-party that afternoon, and that he was to be
+allowed to be present at it.
+
+Then fell misery. He knew why the sponge loaf had been saved, and though
+everybody was kind now, and seemed to feel in an unspeaking way that he
+had been ill-used, he foresaw the near future and trembled.
+
+He had been made to black his Sunday boots, he had been washed with such
+desperate earnestness that his face and neck tingled, and he diffused
+an atmosphere of yellow soap as he walked. He was in his best clothes,
+which fitted him as a sausage is fitted by its skin; he was guillotined
+in a white collar with a serrated inside edge, and guilt filled every
+crevice of his soul.
+
+'Fanny Ann,' said Mrs. Armstrong, putting the last finishing touches to
+the tea-table, 'fetch the sponge loaf.'
+
+A rollicking shout of laughter rose from the tent door, and went rolling
+down the gorge, and the dream was over for the time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+It was mid-July, and even at an altitude of four thousand feet the sun
+could scorch at noonday. The lonely man sat at his outlook, gazing down
+the valley. There was a faint haze abroad, a thickening of the air so
+apparently slight, and in itself so imperceptible, that he would not
+have noticed it but for the fact that it blotted out many familiar
+distant peaks, and narrowed his horizon to some four or five miles. He
+waited for the sun to pierce this impalpable fog, but waited in vain.
+The sun itself was red and angry in colour, and shrunk to half its
+common size. Even at noontide the eye could look on it for a second or
+two without being unbearably dazzled.
+
+The shade in which he sat moved slowly eastward, and had almost deserted
+him, when his hand felt a sudden fierce pang of pain as if an insect had
+stung him. He moved hastily and examined the mark of what he took for
+a sting. It was round, small, and red, as if the end of a hot
+knitting-needle had been pressed upon the skin. Whilst he sat sucking
+at the place to draw the pain away, and looking round in search of the
+insect foe, the same quick burning pang struck him on the cheek. He
+moved hastily again, and stared and listened keenly. There was not a
+buzz of wings anywhere near at hand, and not an insect in sight. But as
+he looked and harkened he was enlightened. A great tear of resinous gum
+had caught and hardened in a fork of the branches, and the sun's rays
+falling on and through this were concentrated as if by a burning-glass.
+The fiery point had stung him.
+
+He broke away the cause of mischief, and then looked about him with
+a new understanding. The forest fires had begun, and it was the smoke
+which so closed in the view. He could detect now a faintly aromatic
+smell of burning, and wondered that he had not noticed it before.
+
+There was not a breath of air stirring, and not a hint of flame in all
+the haze which on every side blotted out the far-off hills, and changed
+to a dull tint of smoke those which still loomed upon him. At night the
+moon hung in the starless sky like a globe of blood, and day by day the
+dimness of the air increased. The cloud took no form of cloud, and not
+a sound came through it except for the voice of the water, and the
+occasional roll and clangour of the trains. The distances in view grew
+briefer and more brief, and within a week of the date of his discovery
+the nearest peaks were obliterated, and the air had grown pungent with
+its charge of invisible burned atoms.
+
+He sat in the midst of this narrowed and darkened world, this world of
+silence and solitude, as he sat in the middle of his own despairs. His
+life had fallen away to this--an aching heart in a world where no man
+came. Had it not been for pride, he could have wept for pity of himself.
+Had it not been for a sense of rebellion against fate and the world,
+he could have died of his own disdain. He had played the fool, but the
+world had taken an unjust advantage of his folly. He loathed himself and
+it.
+
+Thus trebly banished--from friends, from the world, from Nature--he
+dreamed his dreams. The past came back again.
+
+Paul was keeping shop. The door, rarely passed by the foot of a
+customer, stood open to invite the world at large. Armstrong came in
+with his spectacles resting on his shaggy brows. Paul, who had been
+wool-gathering, went back to nominative, dative, and ablative. He hated
+the Eton Latin grammar as he had not learned to hate anything else in
+life.
+
+'Any custom?' asked the father.
+
+'Nobody,' said Paul.
+
+'Paul, lad,' said Armstrong, after a lengthy pause. He cleared his
+throat, and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. 'Yell reach your twalth
+birthday next week. It's time ye were doing something in the warld.'
+He pulled down his glasses and looked at the lad gravely. 'I've tauld
+Mester Reddy ye'll not be going back to school after the holidays.
+There's over-many mouths to keep, and over-many backs to clothe, lad.
+Ye'll have to buckle to, like the rest of us.'
+
+'Yes, father,' said Paul. The prospect looked welcome, as almost any
+change does to a boy.
+
+'What would ye like to be?' his father asked
+
+'I dunno,' said Paul, rubbing his nose hard with the back of one
+freckled hand.
+
+'Well, I'll thenk it over. Ye can get away to your plays now, but the
+serious purpose o' life's beginnin' for ye.'
+
+Paul needed no further leave. He snatched his cap and was away up the
+High Street before anybody could find time to tell him that his neck
+was unwashed, his boots unblacked or unlaced, or his collar disarranged.
+These reminders were an unfailing grievance to him when they came, and
+they seemed to hail upon him all day long. With the thought that he was
+entering the world and beginning his career in earnest, he thrust his
+hands into his corduroy pockets, swaggering in his walk, and so absorbed
+that he forgot to touch the street lamp-posts for two or three hundred
+yards. He stood overcome by this discovery, retraced his steps almost to
+the shop-door, in spite of his fear of being recalled, and then raced
+on his original way, laying a hand on each lamp-post as he passed it
+In this fashion he arrived at the gate of an unpretentious little house
+which had many reasons for looking glorious and palatial in his eyes.
+For one thing, it was a private house. No business of any sort was done
+there, and its inhabitants lived on their own money. Then it stood back
+from the road, behind iron railings, and had a gravel pathway leading
+to the front door, and a little bit of orderly garden with one drooping
+laburnum in it, which in its season hung clear gold blossoms over the
+roadway. There was a small coach-house beside the main building. It held
+no vehicle of any sort, but it was a coach-house all the same. Inside
+the house everything was neat and clean, and to Paul's mind luxurious.
+There were carpets in all the living-rooms and bedrooms. There was a
+piano, there were marble mantelpieces with gold-framed mirrors over
+them, one to each front-room, and the chambers which held these
+splendours were familiarly used, and not merely kept for show. Paul had
+the run of this house, for the orphan children of his mother's second
+cousin lived there, and the relationship was recognised.
+
+He rang the bell, and a fresh-coloured, prettyish girl in a smart cap
+came to the door.
+
+'Oh,' she said, 'it's you, is it! Come to see the young ladies, are
+you?' Paul nodded with his hands in his pockets.
+
+'You're in pretty fettle!' said the girl. 'Look at your boots! Look at
+your hair! Look at the smut on your nose!'
+
+Paul looked at his boots, tried to look at his hair, squinted downwards
+in search of the smut, and said: 'Bother!'
+
+'All right,' the girl responded. 'You'll find 'em in the garden. They'll
+be rare and proud to see you.'
+
+Paul, somewhat shamefaced, took the familiar way into the garden, and
+stood rooted. A small striped tent of pink and white had been set up on
+the unshaven grass-plot, and five or six girls, all in white dresses,
+were seated near it round a tea-table. One, who had black hair and dark
+eyes, wore a crimson sash, and the rest had blue sashes with prodigious
+bows. Paul knew them all with one exception, but after the first glance
+he had eyes for the exception only. She was a lackadaisical young person
+of eighteen, with pale sandy ringlets and a cold-boiled-veal complexion;
+but he thought her a creature of another sphere, and his heart shivered
+with a strange, delicious sense of worship. He stood and stared, and his
+inward thoughts were poorly translated by his aspect, as happens with
+most people How long the dream held him he did not know, but the Vision
+turned, and he met the young person's eye.
+
+'Who is that dirty boy? asked the Vision. 'I suppose he wants to speak
+to you, Zillah.'
+
+Zillah, who was the elder of the two orphan girls, turned, and blushed
+till she looked the colour of her sash. But she rose from her seat and
+came to Paul and whispered to him:
+
+'You mustn't come here to-day, Paul We've got company. And goodness
+gracious, child, how untidy you are to be sure!'
+
+Then shame fell like an avalanche, and Paul went altogether dizzy and
+silly under the shock of it How he got home he never knew, but an
+hour later he was in the back-kitchen, standing on a mat in his
+stocking-feet, with his shirt-sleeves turned up to his elbows, and was
+polishing his boots until the leather grew hot beneath the brush. He
+washed himself in a frenzy of remorse and resolve, and scoured his hands
+with yellow soap, silver sand, and a stubbly scrubbing-brush until they
+tingled. Then he fell upon the family stock of hair-oil, which was kept
+in a medicine-bottle in the kitchen cupboard, and, except on Sundays,
+was held sacred to the girls. Then he put on a clean collar (which was
+a daring and outrageous defiance of authority, which allowed but two a
+week), and prepared to face consequences. The family brush and comb
+were kept in a small bag which hung on a nail beside the scratched and
+defaced old family looking-glass, and Paul was artistically at work upon
+his hair when his mother entered the kitchen. The excellent woman sat
+down to laugh, and Armstrong came in with his customary vague air of
+patient thinking.
+
+'William,' said Mrs. Armstrong, 'look at our Paul. Niver tell me the
+hage of merricles is past Why, I believe he's fell in love!'
+
+It was the perpetual astonishment of Paul's life that his mother
+always knew and understood the things he would not have her know and
+understand. Even now, at his tent-door, seeing all these dead hours so
+clearly that he forgot his present existence altogether, he thought of
+her half-malicious, wholly-humorous intuition with wonder. Why had she
+never understood the things he would have given so much to have her
+understand?
+
+Armstrong smiled with a melancholy, tired sweetness.
+
+'Larn to be tidy, lad,' he said. 'I like a self-respecting fellow that
+honours his own person.'
+
+'M'm,' said Mrs. Armstrong. 'You've got a five days' beard on, William.'
+
+He looked at her, stroking his own bristly chin.
+
+'Ay,' he said. 'This'll be Thursday. Paul, just be getting me my razor
+and the brush and soap-box, there's a good lad.'
+
+Paul obeyed, and then betook himself to the timber-grove, where he sat
+rapt into meditations on the Vision. He had read whatever came within
+his reach, good, bad, or indifferent, and his conscious thoughts were
+always a patchwork of phrases. When he was put to mind the shop he read
+the penny weeklies. He was fresh from one of the works of J. F. Smith,
+the un-remembered prose laureate of the _London Journal_, who would have
+been reckoned a giant of invention if he had lived in these days, and a
+sentence from his latest chapter got into Paul's head and went round
+and round: 'There lay the fair, gifted, almost idolized girl.' In Mr.
+Smith's moving page the fair, gifted, almost idolized girl was dying,
+and Paul did not as yet know enough of the story-teller's craft of that
+day to be sure that she would recover in the next chapter. She mixed
+herself with the lady of the sandy ringlets who had described him as a
+dirty boy, and the pathos of the situation lent an added anguish to his
+thoughts. How beautiful was the lady of the ringlets, how ethereal in
+aspect, how far removed, how worshipful, how adorable! How refined was
+her voice, how elegant her accent! She had spoken of him as a b'y, but
+that was a local fashion, and Paul knew no better. She was far and far
+away--a being of the skies, at once an aristocrat and an angel. He began
+to make verses about her, of course--ghastly, fustian stuff, at the
+recollection of which the Solitary shuddered, and then laughed. But from
+that day forward Paul had spasmodic rages of personal cleanliness and
+adornment.
+
+There was a jar of goose-oil always kept on the top of the baking-oven
+in the back-kitchen, and, learning that goose-oil was an unfailing
+specific for the growth of whiskers and moustache, he began to rub his
+lip and cheeks with this unguent Many a time when he was left alone he
+lit a candle, and getting his face between it and the mirror, tried to
+trace on the outline a fringe of hair. He found an occasional momentary
+satisfaction in burned cork, but the joy was futile, and impermanent.
+
+He met the Vision in the street one day when he was carrying a parcel,
+and the shame of his menial employment, and the sense of the coarseness
+of his clothes made him long for the earth to open. The fact that the
+young person did not know him, or look at him, or think about him, made
+no difference. The young head was filled with absurd dreams. Sometimes
+he was a prince in disguise. He was being bred up to know nothing of his
+princedom, so that he might be splendidly and properly astonished when
+the revelation came. At other times he recognised his lowly origin, and
+went away into the boy's Somewhere--a noble country full of beneficent
+chances--and came back great and glorious, in gloves and patent-leather
+boots, and a hat and moustache, and conquered the Vision and married
+her. At other times he died, with his great heart unspoken, and was
+buried in the parish churchyard.
+
+But whilst he was full of all manner of ambitions and yearnings, and
+dreams which nobody else in the wide world dreamed about, a family
+conclave was held to decide what Paul should be. One Simmons, a dapper,
+perky draper in the High Street, wanted a shop-boy, and Mrs. Armstrong
+was for asking the place for Paul There was not a grain of ambition in
+the household, and the melancholy fact was that there was no money to
+bind Paul apprentice anywhere. But Paul would have none of the draper.
+He was cuffed in corners by the maternal hand, but he held his own.
+He would run away, he declared, he would drown himself, he would do
+anything rather than submit to that. So finally he was turned into the
+ramshackle old printing-office, where all his elder brothers had been
+before him, and learned to sort pie, and to roll at press, and to
+sweep the floors, and to blow old dusty type-cases clean. He wore
+a brown-paper apron tied about his waist with string, and lived so
+obscured in printer's ink, for which he seemed to have a natural
+affinity, that he hardly looked like a white boy at all.
+
+He was still a liar, but he told his lies on paper now, and hid them. He
+told them in prose and verse--prose which was measled with 'Oh's,' and
+'Alas's,' and full of great windblown phrases of bombast, like inflated
+bladders, each with one little parched pea of meaning to rattle inside
+it The verse was mainly such as might have been written by a moderately
+illiterate absurd old man who had found life a vanity, and had deserved
+his discovery.
+
+There was one idle and worthless journeyman in the ramshackle office,
+and one only. He kept the place like a pigsty, and the floor was
+littered with boards on which unlocked formes of type fell about into
+confusion. Paul could pick his way through these blindfold, and many and
+many a night in the dark he raged out his verses, marching to and fro
+with the four big dim windows staring dully at him, wall-eyed with
+countless paper patches, seen as darker blots on the darkness.
+
+One night he was there in hiding. He had played truant from
+Sunday-school and chapel, and had been all day in the fields, hungry,
+but happy beyond all dreaming. And, oh! the Sundays! the dreary, bestial
+days, with Sunday-school at half-past nine and chapel at eleven, and
+Sunday-school at half-past two and chapel at half-past six and family
+prayers at nine, and bed at half-past nine, and books forbidden, and
+speech a crime, and whistling a felony. Paul had broken loose, and knew
+not what to look for, and cared little for the hour. For his head was
+full of verses, and his heart was full of the summer day, and for
+the first time in his life he had gone to Nature, and forgotten his
+thrice-thirty-times copied emotions, and had dared to speak in his own
+voice. The lines he had made that day were unutterably sacred and sweet
+to him. The dreaming Solitary, staring down the gorge, heard the
+boy's awestruck whisper, and, forgetting all the rest of the verses,
+remembered this one only:
+
+     'Why, all is happy!   Not a worm that crawls,
+        Or grasshopper that chirps about the grass,
+     Or beetle basking on the sunny walls,
+        Or mail-clad fly that skims the face of glass
+     The river wears in summer;--not a bird
+        That sings the tranquil glory of the fields,
+     Or single sight is seen or sound is heard,
+        But some new pleasure to my full soul yields!'
+
+Paul, standing there in the darkness, whispered this many times as if
+struck with awe by it, and indeed the boy wondered, and thought it an
+inspiration.
+
+'That is poetry,' said Paul 'I am a poet--a poet--a poet!'
+
+He fell on his knees, with his face on his hands in the open quoin
+drawer, feeling as if he had uttered a blasphemy. How long he was there
+he never knew, but he was disturbed by the grating of a door below, and
+his father's voice called up the stairs:
+
+'Paul! Where are ye?'
+
+'Here, father,' Paul answered
+
+A sob met his voice half-way, and Armstrong came stumbling up the
+stairs.
+
+'What's the matter, lad?' he asked, in a tone between concern and
+impatience.
+
+'Nothing,' said Paul.
+
+'Why is't ye're here alaun?' his father demanded 'And whaur have ye been
+the livelong day? And what are ye cryin' for?
+
+'Nothing,' said Paul again.
+
+'Ye're not such a fule,' said Armstrong, 'as to be cryin' an' hidin' for
+naething, an' I'm not such a fule as to believe it.'
+
+He paused, but Paul made no reply. The old man struck a lucifer match
+and lit the gas. The boy stood blinking in the light, his face stained
+with tears, his eyelids red and a little swollen. To the father's eye he
+looked sullen and defiant Of course he was neither, but he was entirely
+hopeless of being understood, and therefore helpless to explain.
+
+'Noo, Paul,' said Armstrong, with a severity which he felt to be
+justified, 'I'm goin' to the bottom o' this business. Ye've absented
+yourself the haul day from the House o' God. Ye've not been seen since
+morning's light, and it's nigh-hand on midnight Whaur _have_ ye been?
+Answer me that at once, sir.'
+
+'In the Hoarstone Fields,' said Paul.
+
+'And wha's been with ye, helping ye to desecrate God's day?'
+
+'Nobody, father. I've been by myself all the while.'
+
+'And what's been your work, my lad?' There was silence, and the silence
+began to have a threat in it 'I'm goin' to the bottom o' this affeer,
+Paul,' said the father. He meant that honestly, but he was not taking
+the right way. 'I'm not to be put off by ony lies or inventions. Ye've
+been alaun in the Hoarstone Fields all day? What took ye there? And hoo
+have ye passed the time? I'll know!' he added, after another long pause.
+
+Perhaps there was nobody in the world who stood less chance of knowing,
+but how should Armstrong have guessed that? He was a just man, and as
+kind-hearted a father as might have been found within a hundred miles.
+If he could have known the truth, he would not only have been disarmed,
+but proud and glad. But Paul at this time had a holy terror of him. It
+grew to a close and reverent affection later on, and there was such a
+confidence between this pair as is not often found. But now? Paul would
+have suffered anything rather than tell the truth. It was not that he
+would not. He could not His tongue was fettered.
+
+'Noo, Paul,' said Armstrong. 'Let's have a luik at this. Ye're not
+supposin' in your inmost mind that I'm in the least small degree likely
+to believe the yarn ye've tauld me. Ye've been in the lonely fields all
+day, doing naething and speaking to naebody. And for that ye've stayed
+away from your meals, an' noo ye're in hiding like a creminal? It hasn't
+an air o' pro-babeelity, Paul; it has _no_ air o' pro-babeelity. You see
+that?
+
+Paul saw it--quite as clearly as his father. But how was it to be
+explained? Could Paul say, 'My good sir, I am a boy of genius. I have
+been filled with the Divine afflatus, and have been driven into solitude
+by my own thoughts. I have been so held by dreams of beauty that I have
+forgotten everything'? Could Paul offer that intolerable cheeky boast?
+And yet to offer to explain was to do that, and nothing less than that.
+
+'Vary well,' said Armstrong. 'Ye'll go to your bed, and I'd advise ye
+to thenk the matter over. I'll gev ye till morning. But I'll have the
+truth, or I'll know the reason why.'
+
+The gas went out under Armstrong's thumb and finger on the tap, and in
+the sudden darkness the gray, patient, reproachful face still burned in
+the boy's eyes.
+
+'Father!' said Paul, and stretching out both hands, he caught hold of
+him by the sleeve.
+
+'Well!' answered Armstrong sternly.
+
+He thought it his duty to be stern, but the tone killed the rising
+impulse of courage in Paul's heart He could have stammered a hint of the
+truth then, and the darkness would have been friendly to him. A caress,
+a hand on head or shoulder, would have done the business, but caresses
+were not in fashion in the Armstrong household. There was another
+silence, and Armstrong said:
+
+'I gev ye till morning, and then Paul, my lad, ye'll have yourself to
+thank for what may happen. I'll be at the bottom o' this matter, or I'll
+know the reason why. I'm no friend to the rod, but I'll not stand by
+open-eyed an' see you walkin' straight to the deevil without an effort
+to turn ye. An' I'll have naething less than a full confession. Ye may
+luik for a flogging if I don't get it, and a daily flogging till I do.
+For, my lad, if I flay your back, and break my heart to do it, I'll win
+at the truth.'
+
+They went down the long dark garden together, and at the kitchen-door
+Armstrong paused.
+
+'It's a sore thing,' he said, 'for a man to have to misuse his ain flesh
+an' blood. But ye're not of an age to understand that. Remember, Paul,
+this is not my seeking; but I'll have the truth by foul means or fair.
+And it's just you to choose.'
+
+Paul entered the kitchen, and his mother was for instant justice, as she
+saw it, but Armstrong intervened.
+
+'This matter is in my hands,' he said.
+
+He was a very quiet and yielding man in many things, but when he chose
+to speak in that way he made his word law.
+
+Then came the lonely night. The wretched poet, a weedy lad who had
+overgrown his strength, lay in bed and cried in anguish. He topped his
+father by a head already, though he was but three months beyond his
+fifteenth birthday, and if he had chosen to fight he might perhaps have
+held his own. But a thought so impious never entered his mind. He was
+helpless, and he lay blubbering, undignified, with a breaking heart. He
+did not think much or often of the coming pain, but he brooded on the
+indignity and injustice until he writhed with yelps of wrath and hatred
+and agony of heart, and awoke Dick, who wanted to know what was the
+matter, and was roughly sympathetic for a time, until, finding he could
+make out nothing, he turned and went to sleep again.
+
+There were black looks in the morning everywhere, for Paul was known
+to be in deep disgrace again. He swallowed a cup of the thin, washy
+coffee--its flavour of chicory and coarse brown sugar was nauseous on
+the palate of the man at the tent door--and then his father, pale as
+himself, rose amidst the affrighted boys and girls, and motioned him
+silently to the sitting-room. This was a sort of family vault, with its
+scanty furniture in grave-clothes, and a smell of damp disuse about it
+always, even in summer-time.
+
+'Are ye ready with the truth?' asked Armstrong. Paul looked at him like
+a dumb thing in a trap, but said never a word. 'Very well,' The gray
+man's hands shook and his voice, and his face was of the colour of gray
+paper. 'Go to the back-kitchen and strip.'
+
+Paul, dry-eyed, gloomy, and desperate, walked before, and his father
+followed. The girls clung to each other. There had been no such scene as
+this in the house for years. The tawse had hung idle even for Paul for
+many and many a day. Armstrong took the instrument of justice from its
+hook, and laid it on the table He took off his coat, and rolled up his
+left shirt-sleeve. He was left-handed. The arm he bared was corded and
+puny. It shook as if he had the palsy. His wife had a sudden pity for
+him, and ran at him with a gush of tears.
+
+'William,' she said, 'don't break your heart for the young vil'in; he
+isn't worth it Oh, God! I wish he was no child o' mine.'
+
+She dropped into a chair and cried. Armstrong passed out of the kitchen.
+The girls listened, and Dick, chalky white, with his mouth open, as Paul
+had seen him on his way through. They heard the swish, swish, swish of
+the tawse, and not another sound but hard breathing for a full minute;
+then Paul began to groan, and then to shriek.
+
+'Now,' panted Armstrong, 'shall I have the truth?'
+
+There was no answer, and he fell to again; but Paul turned and caught
+his arm, and after an ineffectual struggle, the old man dropped the
+tawse and walked into the kitchen. Paul dressed and sat on the table,
+quivering all over. He sat there for hours, and nobody approached him
+until at last the servant, with frightened eyes, came to make ready for
+dinner; then he got up and went to his old refuge in the lumber-room.
+One of his sisters brought him food after the family dinner-hour, but he
+refused it passionately.
+
+'Oh, Paul,' she said, clinging to him till he shook her from his
+writhing shoulders, 'why don't you confess?'
+
+'Confess what? snarled Paul. 'Confess I was born into a family of fools
+and nincompoops? That's all I've got to confess.'
+
+He was left to himself all day, and at night he went un-chidden to the
+larder, and helped himself to bread and cheese. He took a jug to the
+pump, and coming back, ate his meal, standing amongst his people like an
+outlaw.
+
+'Well, Paul,' said his father, 'are ye in the mind to make a clean
+breast of it?'
+
+'No,' said Paul, 'I'm not.'
+
+The defiance fell like a thunderbolt, and eyes changed with eyes all
+round the room in horror and amazement.
+
+'We'll see in the morning,' Armstrong said.
+
+'All right,' answered Paul; and so finished his meal, and took his cap
+from its hook behind the door.
+
+'Where are you going?' cried his mother.
+
+'That's my business,' said Paul, breaking into sudden passionate
+defiance. 'What am _I_ flogged like a dog for? _You_ don't know. There
+isn't one of you, from father down to George, who knows what I've been
+doing. I can't remember an hour's fair play from the day that I was
+born. Look here, father: you may take another turn at me to-morrow and
+next day, you can come on every morning till I'm as old as you are, but
+you'll never get a word out of me. I've done no harm, and anybody with
+an ounce of justice in him would prove something before he served his
+own flesh and blood as you've served me.'
+
+He was in a rage of tears again, and every word he spoke was tuned to
+the vulgar accent of his childhood. 'Father' was 'feyther' and 'born'
+was 'boorn.' He did not speak like a poet, or look like one to whose
+full soul all things yielded pleasure. These thoughts hit Paul, and he
+laughed loud and bitterly, and went his way into the street.
+
+The upshot of it was that Paul was flogged no more. Armstrong sickened
+of the enterprise, and gave it up.
+
+The lonely man was thinking of it all, seeing it all. Suddenly a voice
+seemed to speak to him, and the impression was so astonishingly vivid
+that before he knew he had answered it aloud. He started awake at the
+sound of his own voice, and his skin crisped from head to heel.
+
+'There's no rancour, Paul, lad?' the voice had said, or seemed to say.
+
+'Rancour?' he had answered, with a queer tender laugh. 'You dear old
+dad!'
+
+For the first time the sense of an actual visitation rested with him,
+and continued real. He felt, he knew, or seemed to know, that his
+father's soul was near.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Paul was standing in a room in the old house in Church Vale, the room in
+which the fiddles hung around the wall in their bags of green baize. A
+sound of laughter drew him to the kitchen, and he had to make his way
+through a darkened narrow passage, with the up-and-down steps of which
+he was not familiar. At the turn of the passage he came upon a picture.
+
+To the man at the tent door it was as clear as if the bodily eye yet
+rested upon it.
+
+The kitchen floor was of cherry-red square bricks; the door was open to
+the June sunlight, framing its scrap of landscape, with the windlass of
+the well and the bucket overgrown with mosses and brimming with water
+crystal clear, and there were flowering plants in the window, with
+leaves and blossoms all translucent against the outer dazzle. The
+whole family was gathered there: Uncle Dan, with his six feet of yeoman
+manhood, bald and rufous-gray; Aunt Deborah, with her child's figure and
+the kind old face framed in the ringlets of her younger days; the girls
+and the boys, a houseful of them, ranging in years from six-and-twenty
+to four or five, and every face was puckered with laughter, and every
+hand and voice applauded. In their midst was a stranger to Paul, a
+girl of eighteen, who marched up and down the room with a half-flowered
+foxglove in her hand. She carried it like a sabre at the slope, and her
+step was a burlesque of the cavalry stride. She issued military orders
+to an imaginary contingent of troops, and her contralto voice rang like
+a bell. Her upper lip was corked in two dainty black lines of moustache,
+and on her tumbled and untidy curls she had perched a shallow chip
+strawberry-pottle, which sat like a forage-cap.
+
+'Carry--so! she sang out; and at that instant, discerning a stranger,
+she turned, with bent shoulders and a swift rustle of skirts, and
+skimmed into the back garden.
+
+'Oh, you silly!' cried one of the girls; 'it's only Paul.'
+
+She came back, and as she passed the old moss-grown bucket she bent to
+it and scooped up a palmiul of water, and washed away the moustache of
+burnt cork; then, with a coquettish lingering in her walk, she came in,
+patting her lips with her apron, her roguish head still decorated with
+the strawberry-pottle. Her eyes sparkled with an innocent baby devilry,
+but the rest of her face was as demure as a Quakeress's bonnet Her hair
+was of an extraordinary fineness and plenty, and as wayward as it was
+fine, so that with the shadow of the doorway round her, and the bright
+sunlight in every thread of it, it burned like a halo.
+
+'Paul?' she said, pausing in front of him, and looking from a level
+right into his eyes, whilst her rosy little hands smoothed her apron.
+'Is Paul a cousin, too?'
+
+'Of course he is,' said the girl who had called her back; 'he's our
+first cousin, Paul is.'
+
+'Is he,' she asked, with demure face and dancing eye--' is he--in a
+kissing relationship?'
+
+'Try him, my wench,' said Paul's uncle.
+
+She bunched her red lips for a kiss, like a child, and advanced her
+head. Paul's face was like a peony for colour, but he pouted his lips
+also, and bent to meet hers. When they had almost met, she drew her
+head back with a demure shake and a look of doubt The kitchen rang
+with laughter at Paul's hangdog discomfiture. The innocent, wicked,
+tantalizing eye mocked him, and he was awhirl with shame; but he found
+in the midst of it a desperate courage, and, throwing one arm around her
+neck, he kissed her full on the lips with a loud rustic smack.
+
+'Well,' she said, with a face of horrified rebuke, all but the eyes,
+which fairly danced with mirth and mischief, 'if that's Castle Barfield
+manners, I'd better go home again.'
+
+'Quite right, Paul,' said Paul's uncle. 'Stand none o' their nonsense,
+lad.'
+
+'Oh, but, uncle,' said she, 'you _would_ think him milder to look at
+him--now, wouldn't ee?'
+
+Paul knew the speech of the local gentry, he knew his father's Ayrshire
+accent, and his own yokel drawl; but this new cousin spoke an English
+altogether strange to his ears, and it sounded fairylike. He stared in
+foolish worship.
+
+'You'd better know who you be,' said Paul's uncle, 'and shake hands.
+This is your grand-uncle's grand-niece, Paul. May Gold her name is. May,
+my darlin', this is Paul Armstrong.'
+
+She held out her hand, and Paul took it shyly in his own. He had very
+rarely touched a hand which was not roughened more or less by labour.
+The warm, soft pressure tightened on his own hard palm for an instant
+only, but he tingled from head to foot as if he had touched something
+electric.
+
+'Oh!'-she said, 'this is Uncle Armstrong's little boy? She was by two
+years his senior, and for a girl she was tall; but he was more than on a
+level with her so far as mere height went, and the phrase cut him at the
+heart. She took the strawberry-pottle from her head with both hands, as
+if it had been a crown, and laid it on the kitchen dresser. 'I've heard
+my father talk of his father five hundred times. My father thinks no
+end of Uncle Armstrong. He says that for a man of learning he never met
+anybody one half so sensible.'
+
+Paul fell head over heels in love with the pretty cousin from
+Devonshire. That is to say, he fell in love with his own dreams about
+her, and they were sweet enough for any lad to fall in love with. She
+sang and she played, she brimmed over with accomplishment, which was
+all rustic enough, no doubt, but angel-fine to Paul, and exotic, and
+not like anything within his knowledge. She played and she sang that
+afternoon, and never again had Paul's ears drunk in such tones of
+heaven.
+
+He went home in an ecstasy of delight and anguish. How beautiful she
+was! what a grace enveloped her! Her very name was a ravishment--a name
+of spring and flowers and pure bright skies. May! He dared to whisper
+it, and he tingled from head to heel. His heart fondled it: May! May!
+May! and, with inexpressible vague, sweet longing, May! once more. Then
+her hair! then her voice! then the rosy softness of her hand! then, with
+hideous revulsion, from her perfections to himself! The gulf of shame!
+His boots were an epic of despair, his necktie was a tragedy. Then back
+to her with all the graces of the heavens upon her! Then back to himself
+again, and the deep damnation of the button which was missing from his
+waistcoat Paul was a poet, and should have had a soul above buttons; but
+before the phantom of that missing button his soul grovelled, until it
+sprang up once more to hover round her foot, her hand, her eyes, her
+voice, her name of May! May! May! and, with shudders of frostiest
+self-reproach and richest pleasure, round the memory of that kiss!
+
+In a week or two Paul had grown devoutly religious, and had no idea of
+the real why. The Church Vale cousins were ardent churchgoers, for the
+girls were at the time of life for ardour, and both the Vicar and his
+Curate were unmarried. Paul, whose proper place of Sabbath boredom was
+Ebenezer, was welcome as a proselyte, and had a seat in the family
+pew, and the rapture of walking homeward sometimes by the side of the
+feminine magnet.
+
+So the dweller at the tent door sees himself at church, a pious varier
+from chapel. The July sunbeams are falling through stained glass; the
+roof-beams of the nondescript old building are half visible in shadow.
+The windows are open, and a warm, spiced wind flutters through in
+pleasantly successful disputation with odours of dry-rot and chilly
+earth and stone. The sheep are bleating amongst the mounded graves, and
+the curate is bleating at the lectern. A yearning peace is in Paul's
+heart, and the pretty distant cousin is near at hand, with a smell of
+dry lavender in her dress. The first twining of feeling and belief is
+here, the earliest of many of those juggleries of Nature which make a
+fool of reason. Oh, sweet hour! oh, happy world! oh, holy place, where
+she is! Oh, harmless, innocent calf-love! A jolly old throstle is
+singing away in the elm which overhangs the parson's gate. There is a
+disembodied skylark voice somewhere high up in the mare's-tail clouds
+which veil the earth from too much heat and brightness; and the young
+heart is unhardened and unspotted from the world.
+
+And oh! oho! the elysium of the summer mornings, when Dick and Paul,
+and the cousins, male and female, rose at four and strayed with their
+Devonian angel through lanes and fields as far as Beacon Hargate,
+gathering wild flowers and calling at the farm for milk. There are
+no more such flowers, there is no more such air, no more such merry
+sunshine; there is no such nectar any more as foamed in the shining
+pail.
+
+On the way from Church Vale to Beacon Hargate there is a brook, which
+now runs ink and smells of evil, and in those days flowed so clear that
+you could count the parcel-coloured pebbles at the bottom, through water
+which was sometimes pellucid as diamond, and sometimes of a cairngorm
+colour. The arched pathway over it, with its weather-stained, square-cut
+timber guards at either side, was called June Bridge, and above and
+below the bridge, in curved hollows of the banks where the bed of the
+brook was earthy, water-lilies floated, sliding with the stream, and
+tugging back on their oozy anchorage. Paul found his goddess leaning on
+this bridge, watching the lilies, and began to hum whilst he was yet out
+of hearing,
+
+'May, on June bridge, in July weather,' and to make a song in his head.
+
+'Can ee swim, Paul?' asked his goddess.
+
+'Oh yes,' said Paul, 'I can swim right enough. Want them lilies?' She
+nodded, smiling. 'I'll get 'em for you.'
+
+He climbed the bridge, and dropped into the meadow.
+
+'I'll wait for ee,' said May, and sauntered on out of sight.
+
+Paul stripped and dived, came up with a shake of the head, and swam
+down-stream. He reached the water-lilies in a dozen strokes, laid a hand
+on the stalk of one in passing, and tugged at it. The stem proved to be
+tougher than he had guessed, and he dropped his feet to find bottom. He
+was out of his depth, but he set both hands low and twisted at the stem.
+This took him under water, but he came up smiling triumph, threw his
+prize into the meadow, and paddled round the group on an outlook for the
+finest blooms. One in the very middle of the floating bed was fresh and
+flawless, and he swam for it. A number of cold weedy things were round
+his legs at once, and before he knew it he was thickly meshed. The slimy
+touch sent an unpleasant thrill through him, but he had no sense of fear
+as yet He wrenched off the bloom he had aimed for, and again he went
+under water. Then he found he could not rise, and a sudden spasm of
+terror shook him. He struggled madly, and the pulses in his head beat
+like bells. Just when the case seemed desperate, and he felt as if he
+must take breath or die, something gave way. He surged upward, and got
+one great gulp of air. His senses came back to him, and the terror died
+away. He threw himself upon his back and paddled, and, keeping his face
+above water thus, he tried artrully and slowly to extricate his legs
+from the net which held them. A minute went by, and he was bound as fast
+as ever. Instinct told him that another struggle meant ruin, and yet
+instinct bade him struggle. He set his teeth and paddled softly. How
+long could he last like this? he asked himself; and at that instant he
+seemed to find an answer. The attitude in which he floated was becoming
+rapidly more and more upright. There was a sinking weight upon his feet.
+
+At this he shrieked for help, but he paddled softly and without hurry
+all the same. He listened as well as he could for the beating in his
+ears. The fields seemed deserted, but he called again. He closed his
+eyes and listened, paddling softly, with set teeth. He was nearly
+upright in the water now, and the weight still dragged But there was
+yet an inch or two to spare, and he was resolved to make the most of his
+chances. He called for help again, and a voice answered him petulantly
+from the bank.
+
+'You silly toad!' said the pretty cousin. 'What do you want to frighten
+me like that for?' 'I'm drowndin'!' Paul answered.
+
+'Not you!' said the pretty cousin. She made a movement of disdain, and
+turned away; but Paul yelled at her with a fear so vivid that she turned
+again with a white face, and fell upon her knees. 'Oh, Paul,' she cried,
+'are ee really drownin'?'
+
+'Yes, I am,' said Paul doggedly. 'These blasted weeds is pullin' me
+down. Be quick! Tie that there lace thing to your parasawl, and shy it
+to me. Look slippy, or it'll be all up with me. Hold your end tight.
+Now, shy! Pull now! Gently--gently.'
+
+He reached the bank, and gripped it with both hands. There was no need
+to say that he had had a fright. His wide eyes and the colour of his
+face said that.
+
+'Can ee get out now?' she asked.
+
+'No,' said Paul; 'I'm anchored.'
+
+'I'll pull ee out,' said she, rising to her feet; and Paul thrust one
+hand towards her. She took him by the wrist, stuck both heels in the
+crisp turf, and pulled. Paul set an elbow on the brink, and strained
+upwards with all his might Something sucked out of the stream-bed, and
+the waters went muddy. 'You're coming!' cried May, and gave a haul which
+was meant to be victorious; but Paul still hung like a log.
+
+'There's about a ton of it,' said Paul. 'It's tied like ropes.'
+
+'Gimme t'other hand,' returned young Devon. 'I'll pull ee out if I dies
+for't.'
+
+Paul surrendered the other hand, and she pulled. There was another
+suck at the bottom of the stream, and Paul came up by a foot. She went
+backwards for a new vantage-ground, and pulled again, and Paul came to
+bank, clothed from the waist downward in water-lily leaf and weed, and
+lay face downwards helpless on the turf at her feet.
+
+'Now,' she said tartly, 'you're not goin' to faint, I hope!' Paul said
+nothing. 'Like a girl,' she added, with disdain.
+
+'Not me,' answered Paul, with his nose in the turf. 'What have I got to
+feint for?'
+
+He asked the question with feeble scorn, and fainted.
+
+May Gold stooped to a basket which lay near her, and, taking from it a
+pair of garden scissors, knelt beside Paul, and began to snip his bonds.
+He woke to find her thus engaged, and a virginal sweet sense of shame
+filled him. Her fingers touched his skin at times, and he tingled with a
+soft fire.
+
+'Nobody'd think it from they grimy paws,' said May Gold to herself; 'but
+he've got a skin as fair as a maid's.'
+
+Paul heard the words, and shuddered exquisitely as she laid her soft
+warm hand on his shoulder, leaning over him, and slicing away at the
+withes in a business-like fashion.
+
+'I'll finish that,' he said tremulously.
+
+'La,' she cried, 'the child's awake all the time! There's the scissors;
+I'll go and wait in the lane.'
+
+Paul lay still for a moment listening to the rustle of her dress; and
+when it had gone out of hearing he rolled over, and with a shaking hand
+began to free himself of the remnant of his bonds. He had not, so far,
+had time to think of the imminent peril from which he had escaped. He
+had been near death. Death! What a grip at the heartstrings! He had
+had his second of terror in the fact, but the fact was nothing like the
+looking back on it There was no urgent fear now to compel him to the
+restraint of cowardice, and at this instant he was coward from scalp to
+sole--from heart to skin coward. The peril escaped was a thousand times
+more horrible than the peril endured, and he quailed now that the danger
+was over.
+
+All his thoughts and half his feelings had hurried for weeks past
+towards prayer. In his extremity he had not prayed or thought of
+praying. A cool, self-centred, self-preserving something in his mind had
+taught him to command all his own forces for one purpose. Would he have
+been damned if he had lost the power to pray before that cunning mentor
+of the flesh deserted him?
+
+He dressed lingeringly and feebly, and when he had done so he went back
+to the tangle of water-weeds he had left on the river-bank. There were
+a dozen of the lovely waxlike blooms amongst them, uninjured. He snipped
+them away with the scissors, and, climbing the stile with heavy feet,
+surrendered them to May.
+
+'Oh,' she said shrilly, 'take 'em away! I couldn't bear to look at 'em!'
+
+'Take 'em,' said Paul. 'They jolly nigh cost me my life.'
+
+Before he answered (or before she caught the meaning of his answer) she
+had flung them into the roadway; but at the instant when she understood
+him she made a dart at them, gathered them all together in her hands,
+and sped to the brookside. There she lay at length upon the turf, and
+washed the blooms in the flowing water. Then she gathered long tough
+grasses, and looped them together until she had made a cord, with which
+she bound the waxen posy. Paul followed and sat near, languidly propped
+on one hand to watch her.
+
+'Paul Armstrong,' said May, and he knew at once by this manner of
+address that she was going to be severe with him, 'I'd no idea you was
+so wicked.'
+
+'Oh,' Paul answered defensively, 'I ain't wicked--not over and above.'
+
+'You're a very wicked boy indeed,' she said. 'You was in danger of your
+life--there's no mistake about that, though at first I didn't believe
+you.'
+
+'There's nothing wicked in that,' said Paul
+
+'Ah 1' she cried, her little white teeth gripping one end of the grassy
+cord whilst she wound the other about the stems of the water-lilies,
+'I can see you know what I mean. Using bad language in the very face of
+death and danger! I wonder you wasn't drowned for a judgment.'
+
+'Oh, come,' Paul answered. 'I didn't use bad language.'
+
+'Oh, yes, you did, though,' she retorted. 'And I'm not going to be
+friends with a boy as talks like that.'
+
+'Not friends!' said Paul. 'Why, May?' He spoke in an accent of
+incredulous reproach.
+
+'No,' she said. 'I'm properly shocked, I tell ee. I'm never going to be
+friends again.'
+
+'If I thought that was goin' to be true,' said Paul, 'do you know what
+I'd do?'
+
+'No, I don't,' she answered, 'and I don't want to.'
+
+'I'd hull myself into that brook this minute and never come out again.'
+
+'You'd do what? she asked.
+
+To 'hull' is to hurl in the dialect Paul spoke in youth. The word was
+strange to her.
+
+'I'd throw myself into that brook this minute, and never come out
+again.'
+
+'Oh, you wicked boy!' she cried, but her eyes sparkled with triumph. She
+quenched the sparkle. 'It _is_ true; and after that piece of wickedness,
+it's truer than ever.'
+
+Paul rose to his feet; his face was white, and his eyes stared as they
+had done when she had just rescued him.
+
+'Good-bye, May,' he said.
+
+'Good-bye,' she answered coolly.
+
+'You're never goin' to be friends any more, May?'
+
+'No,' she said, but rose to her feet with a shriek, for Paul had taken
+two swift paces, and had plunged back into the brook, clothes and all.
+'Paul!' she shrilled after him. 'Paul! Don't ee drown. Don't ee now.
+Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't ee!'
+
+Paul stood shoulder-deep in the stream, and she besought him from the
+bank with clasped hands and frightened eyes.
+
+'Goin' to be friends,' said Paul grimly.
+
+'Yes, yes, yes!' she cried. 'Come out, do, there's a dear!'
+
+Paul reached the bank in a stroke, and climbed back into the meadow.
+The instant he gained his feet she rushed at him and boxed his ears
+furiously. Paul laughed with pleasure. He had had his head punched by
+every fighting peer within a mile of home, and the soft little hands
+fell like a sort of fairy snowflakes.
+
+'Oh, you wicked, wicked, wicked boy!' she raged, stamping her foot at
+him. 'You can go in again as soon as ee want to. _I_ won't be so fullish
+as to call ee out.'
+
+'D'ye mean it?' asked Paul, suddenly grim again.
+
+'No,' she said, fawning on him with her hands, but doing it at a
+distance for fear of his wet clothes. 'But, Paul, child, you'll catch
+your death. Run home.'
+
+'I'm not a child,' said Paul. 'I'm within two years as old as you are,
+May. I say, May------'
+
+'Oh, do run home!' she coaxed him. 'Do ee, now, Paul, for my sake.'
+
+'I'm off,' said Paul. 'Ask me anything like that, and I'll walk into
+fire _or_ water.'
+
+'Why, Paul,' said the little Vanity, turning her face down, and looking
+up at him past her beautiful lashes and arched brows, 'whatever makes
+you talk like that?'
+
+'Because it's the simple truth,' said Paul 'You try me, May.'
+
+'But why is it the simple truth?' she asked.
+
+'Because----' said Paul fiercely, and then stopped dead.
+
+'Oh, that's no answer,' she said, with a little sway of her hips. She
+kept her eye upon him, but turned her head slightly aside. She might
+have practised glance and posture all her life and made them no more
+telling. But Paul's teeth were beginning to chatter, and she was
+alarmed. 'Don't stop to tell me now,' she said, and seeing that he was
+about to protest, she added swiftly: 'Come and tell me to-night, Paul,
+won't ee, now? And run home now, Paul, do, there's a dear. Run, and then
+you won't catch cold--to please me, Paul.'
+
+So Paul ran, and ran himself into a glow, and felt as if the fire of
+comfort in his heart would have warmed the Polar regions. Until time and
+experience taught him better, he always wanted a big word for even the
+least of themes.
+
+'Man,' said old Armstrong once (but that was years later), 'ye'd borrow
+the lungs of Gargantua to sing the epic of a house-fly.'
+
+'Yes, dad,' said Paul; 'that's a capital imitation of my style,' and
+they both chuckled affectionately.
+
+But now his mind was a mere firework of interjections--squibs, bombs,
+and rockets of 'Oh!' and 'Ah!' and 'Now!' and 'She'll listen! and
+'She'll despise me!' He was within a month of sixteen, and he was in
+receipt of sixpence a week as pocket-money, but the second fact was to
+be no more durable than the first. He could neither stay at sixteen nor
+at the sixpence. Time would take care of the one event, and Paul of the
+other. An immediate marriage, perhaps even an early marriage, was out of
+question. It might be necessary to wait for years. There was a fortune
+to be made, of course, and though it might come by some rare chance
+to-morrow, it might, on the other hand, take time.
+
+'We've got to be practical,' said Paul.
+
+Whether Paul were a greater ass than most imaginative boys of his years
+may be a question, but he was as serious about this matter as if he had
+been eight-and-twenty, and when he reached home he had been rejected and
+had died of it, and accepted and married many times over. He got into
+his working clothes after a thorough rub down, and, except for a touch
+of languor, was none the worse for his morning's adventure. Armstrong
+was out on business for the day, and in the drowsy afternoon Paul laid
+an old press blanket on the office floor, took a ream of printing-paper
+for a pillow, and slept like a top. This made an end of languor, and
+when the hour of freedom struck, he ran down the weedy garden and raced
+upstairs to his attic-chamber, and there attired himself in his best.
+These were days when the cheapest of cheap dandies wore paper cuffs
+and collars, then newly discovered, and Paul made himself trim in this
+inexpensive fashion. He had spent half an hour at his ablutions before
+leaving the office, and walked towards his rendezvous all neat and
+shining.
+
+May met him at the door with a finger on her lips and a pretty air of
+mystery.
+
+'I've had to fib about ee. Uncle Dan saw you run past all wet this
+morning, and he asked. I had to tell him something. I said you fell in
+trying to reach them watter-lilies. I didn't want your own uncle to know
+your wickedness.'
+
+There was not time for more, for Uncle Dan himself appeared at this
+moment.
+
+'None the worse for your duckin', eh, Paul?'
+
+'Not a bit.'
+
+'We're goin' to have a bit of music, lad. Come in and sit down, if
+you've a mind to it.'
+
+Paul half welcomed and half resented the putting off of the decisive
+moment He was in a dreadful nervous flutter, his hopes alternately
+flying like a flag in a high wind, and drooping in a sick abandonment of
+everything. And May was more ravishing than ever. She had stuck the
+stem of a rose in one little ear like a pen, and the full flower itself
+nestled drooping at her cheek. There was never anything in the world
+more demure than her face and her manner, but the frolic eye betrayed
+her mood now and then, and Paul was half beside himself at every furtive
+smile she shot at him. A local tenor, the pride of the church choir, was
+there, and May and he sang duets together, amongst them 'Come where my
+love lies dreaming.' Paul's heart obeyed the call with a virgin coyness,
+and his thoughts stole into some dim-seen shadowed sanctuary, some place
+of silence where the feet fell soft, and a pale curtain gleamed, and
+where behind the curtain lay something so sacred that he dared not draw
+the veil, even in fancy. 'Her beauty beaming,' sang the local tenor.
+'Her beauty beaming,' May's voice carolled. Heaven, how it beamed! The
+boy's emotion choked him. If shame had not lent him self-control, he
+would have broken into tears before them all.
+
+The musical hour wore away, and the local tenor had a supper engagement,
+and must go. May slid from the room, and soon after her voice was heard
+calling 'Paul.'
+
+Paul answered.
+
+'Come here a minute,' she said. 'I want to speak to ee.'
+
+Paul stumbled out, blind and stupid. She was standing at the open door
+with some gauzy white stuff loosely folded over her hair and drawn over
+her bosom. The July moon was at the full, and low in the heavens.
+
+'Look at that,' she said, and Paul looked.
+
+The four poplars clove the intense dark blue, but not so loftily as
+in his first remembrance of them. The street was quiet Not a sound
+disturbed the humming spicy silence of the summer night Paul turned from
+that sweet intoxication to her face. She smiled at him, and his heart
+seemed to swoon. He did not know till later, but she suffered from some
+very slight tenderness of the eyes which made them shrink from too much
+light, and he had never seen her in her full beauty until this moment,
+when they seemed so large and deep that he could scarcely bear to look
+at them. She had a hat in her hand, and she held it out to him, still
+smiling, but so dreamily, so unlike herself, that he could but look and
+tremble and wonder. He took the hat mechanically, and saw that it was
+his own. He thought himself dismissed, and his heart changed from a soft
+ethereal fire to cold lead.
+
+'Auntie!' she called--'Aunt Deb 'Me and Paul's goin' to take a bit of a
+walk. I've got to give him a lecture.'
+
+Some affectionate assenting answer came, and May floated into the
+moonlight, across the street, and into a shady alley which lay between
+two high-hedged gardens; then into moonlight again, across another road,
+through a clinking turnstile, and into a broad field, where Paul had
+played many a game of cricket before and after working hours. From
+here the open country gleamed, mystic and strange; every hill and dale
+familiar, and all unlike themselves, as a friend's ghost might be unlike
+the living friend.
+
+Her first words jarred his dream to pieces.
+
+'You're a funny boy, Paul. After all that fullishness of yours this
+morning I met your brother Dick. He gave me something. I've got it here
+this minute. I want to know if it belongs to you--really. Dick says it's
+all your very own, but I don't more'n half believe him. I say you must
+have copied it out of some book. Now, di'n't ee?'
+
+'I don't know,' said Paul huskily. 'What is it?'
+
+'It's a piece of poetry,' she said. 'Can you make poetry?'
+
+'I try sometimes,' said Paul.
+
+It cost an effort to answer. He wanted her to know, and he shrank from
+her knowing.
+
+'Did you make this?'
+
+'What?'
+
+'I'll tell it.'
+
+She spoke the lines prettily, and put away her rustic accent, all but
+the music:
+
+     '"Down in the West dwells my lady Clare:
+     Blow, O balmy wind, from the West!
+     Bathe me in odours of her hair,
+     Bring me her thoughts ere she fell to rest!
+
+     '"Beam, O moon, through her casement bars;
+     Bathe in thy glory her glorious hair:
+     Keep guard over her, sentinel stars;
+     Watch her and keep her, all things fair!"'
+
+'You didn't make that up out of your own head, did ee, Paul?
+
+'Yes,' said Paul.
+
+Here was his divinity reciting the lines with which she herself had
+inspired him.
+
+'Now, couldn't ee make a piece of poetry about me?' she asked.
+
+Paul's heart gave one great thump at his breast and stopped.
+
+'That was about you,' he said.
+
+'Why, you silly boy,' she said, 'you've got the name wrong. But oh,
+Paul, ain't ee beginning very young? Askin' for maids' thoughts afore
+they go to sleep! Mine, too! You'll be a regular gallows young reprobate
+afore you're much older. That I'm sure of.'
+
+There was a trembling wish deep down in his heart that she had left
+this unsaid, but how could he be so disloyal as to let it float to the
+surface? He drowned it deep, but it was there. She had misunderstood.
+She read him coarsely, not as the May of his dreams had read him.
+
+'Now, you write something about me, will ee, Paul?--something in my
+own name. Will ee?' Paul made no answer for the moment, for the request
+fairly carried him off his balance. 'Will ee, now?' she asked, bringing
+her face in front of his.
+
+'Yes, yes, yes,' he half sighed, half panted.
+
+'Here's a stile,' she said, springing forward with a happy gurgle of a
+laugh. The laugh to Paul's ear was as musical as the sad chuckle of
+the nightingale, and as far from sorrow as its one rival is from mirth.
+There was _camaraderie_ in it, sympathy, a touch even of something
+confidential. 'Now, well sit down here together, and you shall make it
+up.'
+
+She perched on the stile as light as a perching bird, and drew her lithe
+figure on one side to make room for Paul. The stile was narrow, and
+there was barely room for two. Paul hesitated shyly, but she patted the
+seat in a pretty assumption of impatience, and he obeyed.
+
+'Paul,' she said, sliding an arm behind him, and taking hold of the
+side-post. 'What was it ee wanted to tell this morning?'
+
+'This morning?' said Paul stupidly. It is one thing to resolve to be
+courageous in battle. It may be another thing when the fight begins.
+
+'Now, I'm sure you haven't forgot already,' she said. 'Here! You catch
+hold of the post on my side. Then we shall be comfortable.' She swayed
+forward to make easier for him the movement she advised, and her whole
+figure from ankle to shoulder touched him lightly. He obeyed, and she
+swung back again, nestling into the curve of his arm. 'That's nice,
+isn't it? Now, what was ee going to tell?' Paul had not a word to say
+for himself. If he had ever had the audacity to picture anything in his
+own mind like this present truth, he would have thought it certain to
+be deliriously happy; but as a matter of fact he was miserable, and felt
+himself at the clumsiest disadvantage. 'You said,' she murmured, half
+reproachfully, you'd go through fire _or_ water for me, Paul.'
+
+'So I would,' said Paul.
+
+'Why? she asked, nestling a little nearer. 'Why, Paul?'
+
+'I would,' said he, rather sulkily than otherwise.
+
+'Why?' She swayed forward again, and looked into his face. Her breath
+fanned his cheek. Her eyes were wide open and looked into his almost
+mournfully. 'Why?' Her glance hypnotized him. 'Why?'
+
+'I love you,' he said, in a whisper.
+
+'Do ee? she cooed. 'Oh, you silly Paul! What for?'
+
+'I don't know,' he said. 'There never was anybody as lovely as you are.'
+
+The words seemed to slide from him, apart from his will.
+
+'Oh, you silly Paul Am I lovely?'
+
+'Lovely? sighed Paul, and tangled his eyes in hers more and more.
+
+'You'll make up that piece of poetry about me, won't ee, Paul?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+The word was just audible, a breath, no more.
+
+'You dear!' she said; and, leaning nearer and yet nearer to him, she
+laid her lips on his. They rested there for one thrilling instant, and
+then she drew back an inch or two only. 'Make it up about that,' she
+said, looking point blank into his eyes. Paul drooped his head and the
+lips met again, and fastened. A delicate fire burned him, and he curled
+his arm about her waist, and drew her to him. She yielded for one
+instant, and then slipped away with a panting laugh. 'Oh, Paul?' she
+said; 'you really are too dreadful for anything! Fancy! A mere child
+like you. I should like to know what Mr. Filmer'd say if ever he knew
+I'd let ee do that.'
+
+By one of those curious intuitions to which the mind is open at times
+of profound excitement, Paul knew what her answer would be, but he
+asked the question. At first his voice made no sound; but he cleared his
+throat and spoke dryly, and in a tone of commonplace:
+
+'Who is Mr. Filmer?'
+
+'Mr. Filmer's the gentleman I'm going to be married to,' said May.
+'He's a very jealous temper, and I shouldn't like him to know I'd been
+flirting, even with a child like you.'
+
+It was all over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Paul survived. He left the church, and returned with a doubtful
+allegiance to Ebenezer. He joined the singing-class there, for his voice
+had suddenly grown harsh and deep, and he conceived himself to be a
+basso. The parish swarmed with vocal celebrities, and he would be one of
+them. He made his first visit to the class, and got there early.
+
+Came in two young ladies in hoops, with pork-pie hats and hair done up
+in bags of chenille. The like figures may be seen in the drawings of
+John Leech, _circa_ 1860. Each young lady had a curved nose. One nose
+curved inward at the bridge, and the other outward at the bridge, and if
+the curves had been set together they would have fitted with precision.
+Came in a lean lady with a purse mouth, rather open--looking like an
+empty voluntary-bag. Came in a stout lady, like a full voluntary-bag,
+the mouth close shut with a clasp. Came in a gentleman with shining
+rabbit teeth, smiling as if for a wager. Came in a gentleman with a deep
+bass voice consciously indicated in the carriage of his head--the voice
+garrotting him, as it were, rather high up in the collar. Came in a
+gentleman with heavy movable eyebrows, which looked too big for the
+limited playground a very small forehead afforded. Came in a small
+apoplectic man, bald and clean-shaven, and red and angry in the face,
+like an ill-conditioned baby. Came in ladies and gentlemen who smirked
+and slid; ladies and gentlemen who loitered, and were sheepish when by
+hazard they caught an eye; ladies and gentlemen crammed to suffocation
+with a sense of their own importance; ladies and gentlemen miserably
+overwhelmed with a sense of the importance of other people.
+
+Paul knew every one of them, and had known them from childhood; and
+somehow they were all transformed from commonplace, and dignified into
+a comedy which was at once sympathetic and exquisitely droll. His
+narrow world had widened; his neighbours had sprung alive. His heart was
+tickled with a genial laughter, and his mirth tasted sweet to him, like
+a mellow apple. He could have hugged the crowd for sheer delight.
+
+The conductor of the singing-class weeded Paul out at the close of the
+first glee, and brought his musical ambitions to an end.
+
+'Theer are at least twelve notes in an ordinary singin' voice,' said the
+conductor, 'and theer ought to be eight half-tones scattered in among
+'em, somewheer. You've got two notes at present, and one's a squeak
+and t'other's a grumble. I think you might find a more advantageous
+empl'yment for your time elsewheer.'
+
+Paul submitted to this verdict with high good-humour. He retired to the
+far end of the schoolroom, and sat out 'the practice' with a growing
+sense of pleasure. He exulted in the possession of a new sense which
+made all these people lovable.
+
+'Now I've found this out,' said Paul to himself, 'I shall never be
+lonely any more. There'll always be summat to think about--summat with a
+relish in it.'
+
+He must needs, of course, try to get the relish on paper, and he wrote a
+great deal of boyish stuff in flagrant imitation of Dickens, and hid
+it, jackdaw-like, in such places as he could find. In the slattern old
+office where Paul was learning more or less to be a workman at his trade
+there was no such thing as a ceiling. Frayed mortar, with matted scraps
+of cow-hair in it, used to fall frequently into the type-cases
+whenever a high wind shook the crazy slates, and, to obviate this, some
+contriving person had nailed a number of sheets of brown paper to the
+rafters. Paul's hiding-place for his literary work was above these
+sheets of paper, and one day when old Armstrong stood by his side, a
+tintack gave way beneath the superincumbent weight, and the whole bundle
+of scraps in verse and prose fell at the author's feet Armstrong stooped
+for it, and Paul went red and white, and his legs shook beneath him.
+There was an upturned box by the side of the cracked and blistered old
+stove which warmed the room in winter, and Armstrong went to it and sat
+down to untie his bundle. The author had never had any confidences with
+anybody, and his father was one of the last people in the world to whom
+he would have dared to make appeal for advice or help. In his agitation
+he went on pecking at the case of type before him, and setting the
+stamps on end at random, inside out and upside down, and in any
+progression chance might order. The old man coughed, and Paul dropped
+his composing-stick into the space-box with a clatter, and spilt its
+contents there. Armstrong slipped the string which bound the roll of
+papers, and began to glance over his discovery. Paul felt as if the
+ramshackle building had been out at sea.
+
+'M'm,' said Armstrong, with the merest dry tick of a tone which seemed
+to express inquiry and surprise. Paul started as if an arrow had gone
+through him, and dropped his composing-stick a second time. 'Ye're very
+clumsy, there, my lad,' said the old man. 'What's happening?'
+
+Paul made no answer, and the father went back to his papers.
+
+'"Bilsby,"' the old man hummed, half aloud, '"Bilsby is fat--fat with
+the comfortable fatness which has grown about him in the course of
+five-and-forty years of perfect self-approval. Bilsby is not great,
+or good, or magnanimous, or wise, or wealthy, or of long descent, or
+handsome, or admired; but he is happy. He gets up with Bilsby in the
+morning, has breakfast, dinner, tea and supper with him, and goes to bed
+with him at night. If Bilsby had a choice--and Bilsby hasn't--he would
+make no change. He has himself to feed on--an immortal feast He sits at
+that eternal board, before that unfailing dish, which grows the more
+he ruminates upon it. Fat of the fat, sweet of the sweet is Bilsby to
+Bilsby's palate. What will become of Bilsby when he dies? There can be
+no heaven for Bilsby, for he would have to hymn another glory there;
+There can be no fate of pain, for even if the Devil take him, there will
+still be Bilsby, and that fact alone would keep him happy."
+
+'What's all this rampant wickedness, y' irreverent dog?' asked
+Armstrong. 'This is your writing, isn't it?'
+
+'Yes, sir,' said Paul, feeling his throat harsh and constricted like a
+quill.
+
+Armstrong said no more, but rolling up the bundle and sliding the
+knotted string once more about it, put it in his pocket and walked
+downstairs. Paul hardly dared to meet him at the mid-day dinner, but he
+put the best face he could upon the matter--a very pale and disturbed
+face it was--and presented himself at table. Nothing was said. The gray
+man sat with his book propped up against the bread-basket, as usual,
+and ate without knowing what passed his lips. The meal over, he took his
+arm-chair by the kitchen fire, and lit his pipe, and read with the cat
+perched on his shoulder. Mrs. Armstrong went to mind the shop, the rest
+of the family dispersed to their various avocations, and Paul sat still,
+listening to the ticking of the clock, and awaiting the stroke of two
+to take him back to work. He felt as if it would be cowardice to go
+earlier, but he was unhappy, and would willingly have been elsewhere.
+
+Suddenly Armstrong reached out his hand towards the table and set down
+his book. Then from the coat-pocket where Paul had plainly seen it
+bulging he drew the roll of manuscript.
+
+'Paul,' said the old man, 'I've been readin' this farrago, and the less
+that's said about it the better. I obsairve that the main part of it's
+devoted to the exaggerated satire of your neighbours. That's a spirit
+I'm sorry to notice in ye, and I regret to see that ye're already
+looking sulky at rebuke. The vairse,' pursued Armstrong, 'is mainly
+sickly, whining, puling stuff, as far away from Nature and experience as
+it's easily possible to be. Now, I invite ye. Listen to this.'
+
+He began to read with a fine disdain:
+
+     '"Come not when I am dead
+     To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave."'
+
+Paul averted his head, and set one hand before his face. Months ago,
+when May Gold's perfidy was a new thing, and the whole world was
+darkened, he had copied these lines from the Poet Laureate with tears,
+and they had seemed to him a perfect expression of himself. The old man
+ground out the lines with increasing scorn, and Paul began to grin, and
+then to shake with suppressed laughter. Armstrong went on to the end
+unyieldingly.
+
+'I'm not denying,' he said, a moment later, 'that I've found here and
+there a salt sprinkle o' common-sense. But _that_, my lad,' banging
+a hand on the manuscript page before him, 'is simply unadulterated
+rubbish. It's the silliest thing in the haul collection.'
+
+Paul's reverence for his father's judgment in such matters was a
+tradition and a religion. 'Old Armstrong' was the parish pride as
+scholar and critic. The Rev. Roderic Murchison, who was a Master of Arts
+of Aberdeen, sat at the gray little man's feet like a pupil. Armstrong
+had none of the minister's Greek and Latin, but he was his master in
+English letters. In spite of this awful prescription of authority Paul
+spirted laughter.
+
+'It's Tennyson!' he spluttered. 'It's the Poet Laureate!'
+
+'Then,' said Armstrong, 'the Poet Laureate's a drivelling idiot, like
+his predecessor.'
+
+'What?' Paul asked, underneath his breath. He had never listened to such
+blasphemy.
+
+'In my day,' said Armstrong, 'a poet laid a table for men to eat and
+drink at. We'd Sir Walter's beef and bannocks, and puir young Byron's
+Athol brose. Wha calls this mingling o' skim milk an' treacle the wine
+o' the soul a poet ought to pour?
+
+'Scott and Byron!' cried Paul, amazed out of all reverence. 'Why,
+there's more poetry in Tennyson's little finger than in both their
+bodies.'
+
+'Hoots, man! hauld your silly tongue,' cried his father.
+
+'Have you read "In Memoriam"?' cried Paul.
+
+'No,' returned Armstrong curtly, 'I have not.'
+
+'Then,' Paul stormed, 'what's your opinion good for?'
+
+The old man's eyes flashed, and he made a motion as if to rise. He
+controlled himself, however, and reached out a hand to the hob for the
+clay he had relinquished a minute or two before.
+
+'The question's fair,' he said; 'the question's fair--pairfectly fair,
+Paul. I misliked the manner of it, but the question's fair.'
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Paul.
+
+He could have knelt to him.
+
+'They'll be having Tennyson at the Institute Library?' the old man
+asked. 'I'll walk over for him.'
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Paul, 'but Tennyson----'
+
+'Ay, ay!' said Armstrong, 'age fossilizes. It's like enough the man has
+a word to say. I'll look at him.'
+
+He took his rusty old silk hat from its hook beside the eight-day clock,
+and went out quietly.
+
+For the first minute in his life Paul truly loved him.
+
+'It would ha'served me right,' he mourned, 'if he'd ha' knocked me down.
+It's a lot better as it is, though; but it's hard to bear.'
+
+That afternoon, and for many a morning and afternoon for months, old
+Armstrong shuffled swiftly along the weedy garden, and took his seat on
+the upturned box beside the stove, and there studied his Tennyson and
+smoked his pipe. These were halcyon days for Paul, for the old man was
+not long obdurate, and began to halve the delight of his own reading.
+
+'Ay, ay!' he said, by way of making his first admission, '"in My
+Father's house are many mansions." This chap has the key to the
+organ-loft' Then, a little later: 'It's clean thinking, and a bonny
+music' Later still, with a long, slow sigh on the word: 'Eh!' and then,
+unconsciously: 'Deep waters, lad, deep waters.'
+
+He read slowly, for the dialect was new, and he was bent on mastering
+it. His occasional difficulties seemed strange to the boy, but then,
+Paul had been suckled at this fountain, and could make no allowances for
+the prepossessions of age, and the distaste of an old palate for a new
+flavour. An occasional question startled him, the answer was so obvious
+and simple.
+
+     '"Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
+     The chalice of the grapes of God,"'
+
+Armstrong read out 'D'ye find the meaning of that, Paul, lad,' he asked.
+
+'Village church,' said Paul 'Holy Communion.'
+
+'To be sure,' said the old man, 'to be sure. It's tight packed, but it's
+simple as A B C.'
+
+There were questions Paul could not answer, and he and the old man
+puzzled them out together. They drew closer and closer. The boy dared
+to reveal his mind, and the father began to respect his opinion. By
+the time the warm weather was round again they were fast friends. They
+tramped up and down the path of the neglected garden arm-in-arm, and
+talked of literature and politics and the world at large. Paul had
+dreams, and sometimes he gave his father a glimpse of them. Armstrong
+preached humility.
+
+'L'arn, my lad,' he would say, almost sternly, 'l'arn before ye try to
+teach.'
+
+Paul had turned public instructor already, but that was his secret There
+was a sort of treason in it, for Armstrong's rival, a young and pushing
+tradesman, had started a weekly paper, and Paul was an anonymous
+contributor to its pages. This journal was called the _Barfield
+Advertiser, and Quarry-moor, Church Vale, and Heydon Hay Gazette_; but
+it was satirically known in the Armstrong household as the _Crusher_,
+and its leading articles (which were certainly rather turgid and
+pompous) were food for weekly mirth. But one day this was changed.
+
+'Why, William,' cried Mrs. Armstrong, 'this fellow's turned quite
+sensible. You might ha' wrote this yourself. It's simply nayther more
+nor less than you was sayin' last Wednesday at this very table.'
+
+Paul's coffee went the wrong way, and his cough caused a momentary
+diversion. But when Dick had vigorously thumped him on the back, and he
+had resumed his seat at table, Armstrong read the article aloud.
+
+'Ay, ay!' he said at the close, 'it's certainly my own opinion, and vary
+cleanly put.'
+
+Paul's coffee went the wrong way again, and again Dick thumped him
+on the back. When the paper had gone the round of the household the
+anonymous writer stole it, and carried it, neatly folded beneath his
+waistcoat, to the office. He knew it by heart already, but he read it
+insatiably over and over again. He was in print, and to be in print for
+the first time is to experience as fine a delirium as is to be found in
+love or liquor. The typed column ravished his senses, and the editorial
+'we' looked imperial. He was 'we' in spite of shirt-sleeves and
+ink-smeared apron of herden. In those days the _Times_ could uproot a
+Ministry, but its editor in his proudest hour would have been a dwarf if
+he had measured himself by Paul's self-appreciation. Sweet are the uses
+of a boy's vanity, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.
+
+The dreamer in his mountain eyrie felt his heart warm with a sort of
+fatherly pity over these bumpkin raptures. The lad blows a bubble of
+foolery, and it glitters and floats and bursts, and who is the worse
+for it? The man carves folly in brass, and breaks his head on his own
+monument; or forges it in steel, and stabs his own heart with it. The
+vanities of youth are yeast in wholesome ale. The follies of later life
+are mildew in the cask. The lad who never tasted Paul's intoxication may
+make a worthy citizen, but he will never set the Thames afire.
+
+Paul went on writing, and thundered from the editorial pulpit weekly. He
+gave the _Crusher_ a policy. Castle Barfield was to be a borough at the
+next redistribution of seats. Its watchwords were 'Peace, Retrenchment,
+and Reform.' It was to uphold the traditions of Manchester in a curious
+blend with the philosophy, or the want of it, of Thomas Carlyle. It
+assailed the Vicar of All Saints' for the introduction of a surpliced
+choir, and it showed a bared arm and a clenched fist to Popery.
+
+The Jovian wielder of the _Crusher's_ lightnings got used to being
+discussed at the Saturday morning table, and encountered praise and
+blame there with an equal countenance. In his own unplummeted depths he
+was Scott before the discovery of the authorship of the Waverley series;
+he was Junius; he was S. G. O. And not a soul ever guessed at the truth,
+for just as Paul had resolved to reveal his identity and claim his fame
+the _Crusher_ died.
+
+Then for a long time he was voiceless, and, having no paper balloon
+to float him, he went about in his own thoughts, quite like a common
+person. A year later, routing out the whole series of printed articles
+from one of his jackdaw hiding-places, he was inspired by an intense
+disdain, and burned them in the office stove.
+
+All the time the world he lived in was the world he took least heed
+of. Until Ralston crossed him--Ralston, his man of men, and king, and
+deity--the only real creature was the gray old man who had begotten
+him. Father and son had grown to a curious sympathy, in which age never
+domineered because of age, or youth presumed because of youth. Armstrong
+the elder was a poet, though he had never printed a line; and he and
+Paul brought their verses to each other. They used to print at times the
+productions of the local bard, and their first bond of genial and equal
+laughter (which is one of the best bonds in life) came of their joint
+reading of one of his effusions. Paul had given it the dignity of type.
+Armstrong was his own proof-reader, and Paul read the MS. aloud, whilst
+his father, with balanced pen, ticked off the lines. They were headed
+'Lines on a Walk I once took in the Country,' and they opened thus:
+
+'It was upon a day in May When through the field I took my way, It was
+delightful for to see The sheep and lambs--they did agree.
+
+'And as I went forth on that day I met a stile within my way, That stile
+which did give rest to me Again I may not no more see.
+
+'As on my way I then did trod, The lark did roar his song to God.'
+
+There they laughed, with tears, for this was not a jest of anybody's
+purposed making, but a pinch from Nature's pepper-castor, and it tickled
+the lungs to madness.
+
+'Paul, lad,' said Armstrong, coming to a sudden serious end of
+laughter, and wiping his eyes, 'it's not an ungentle heart that finds it
+delightful to see the fleecy, silly people o' the fields in harmony. And
+the reflection on the stile's a fine bit o' pathetics. "I've been happy
+there," says the poor ignorance; "and I may never see it more." It's
+the etairnal hauntin' thoct o' man in all ages. "We've no abiding city
+here." "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth." "Never, never more,"
+says poor Poe's raven. Listen, m'n! Ye'll hear Shakespeare's immortal
+thunder. The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces dissolve with the
+great globe itself and all that it inherits. It's all there, Paul. It's
+in the hiccoughing throat of him. Puir felly! Well just put him into
+decent English, and see that naebody else shall laugh at him.'
+
+So they trimmed the local bard, and made him sober, and even mildly
+sweet; and when, with their joint amendments, they sent the poem home,
+the bard refused to be edited, declined the parcel, and took his trade
+elsewhere.
+
+But the tinkering of the poor verses brought Paul and his father finally
+together, and from that hour onward they were friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+And now the mind of the Exile turned to the episode of Norah
+MacMulty--grotesque, pitiable, laughable.
+
+Paul had pssed his seventeenth birthday, and reckoned himself a man.
+He was in love again, but tentatively. He had read 'Don Juan,' and had
+learned a thing or two. He conceived that he had rubbed off the first
+soft bloom of youth, and the idea, natural to his time of life, that he
+was aged and experienced had taken full hold of him.
+
+He was not wholly certain that he adored the pretty girl at the
+bonnet-shop. He had never spoken to her, for one thing, and had only
+seen her from a distance, but she did well enough to moon about, and
+made an excellent peg to hang verses on.
+
+He had been away on a lovely summer evening's ramble into the quiet of
+the country. He had been verse-making or verse-polishing, and was in a
+high state of mental exaltation when he reached the darkened main street
+of the town about ten o'clock. He turned the corner, and walked straight
+into the arms of a woman, who hugged him with a drunken ardour. Her
+breath was fiery with gin, and the coarsely-sweet scent of it filled him
+with an impulse of loathing.
+
+'Let go,' said Paul
+
+'Deed I'll not let go,' the woman answered, in a drunken voice. 'Ye're
+just sent here be Providence to see a poor lonely little craychure
+home.'
+
+'Let go,' said Paul again; but she clung and laughed, and, in a sudden
+spasm of downright horror, he put out more strength than he guessed,
+and wrenched himself free. The woman tottered backwards, swayed for an
+instant, and then fell. The back of her head came into sharp contact
+with the corner of the wall. She lay quite still, and Paul grew
+frightened. 'Here,' he said, 'take my hand. Let me help you up.' He had
+not expected her to answer, but her continued silence seemed dreadful.
+He kneeled to look closely into her face. She was quite young--not more
+than two or three and twenty at the outside--and she had a quantity of
+light auburn hair, which, though untidy, had a soft beauty of its own.
+Her eyes were closed, and her face was white. 'Now, don't lie there
+pretending to be killed,' said Paul, in an unsteady voice. She made no
+movement, and he rose and looked about him in dismay.
+
+There was not a creature in the street, and the public lamps were never
+lighted in the summer-time. A long way off the windows of a gin-shop
+cast a light upon the road, and nearer, on the opposite side, a red
+lamp burned. With a lingering glance of fear and pity at the recumbent
+figure, Paul sped towards the red lamp as fast as he could lift a leg.
+In his agitation he gave such a tug at the bell that it clanged like a
+fire-alarm. The doctor's assistant, a dashing young gentleman whom Paul
+knew from afar, and who was remarkable to him chiefly for an expensive
+taste in clothing, came briskly to the door.
+
+'There's a woman at the corner,' said Paul, 'badly hurt; I thought it
+best to let you know.'
+
+The assistant snatched a hat from the hall table, and came out at once.
+
+'Where is she?'
+
+Paul pointed, and they ran together. The assistant had the quicker turn
+of speed, and reached the corner first. He was kneeling beside the woman
+when Paul reached him.
+
+'Got a handkerchief?' he asked
+
+Paul lugged half a square yard of turkey-red cotton from his pocket.
+'That's the ticket,' said the assistant. He folded the handkerchief..
+'Now, hold her head up whilst I get this under it.'
+
+Paul obeyed again, but the hair was all in a warm wet mesh of blood.
+
+'What are you shaking at?' the assistant asked him. 'You're a pretty
+poor plucked un,' he added, as he tied the bandage tight across the
+woman's forehead.
+
+'I'm not used to it,' said Paul, choking with nausea and pity.
+
+'That's pretty evident,' returned the other. 'Now, get her shawl round
+her head whilst I hold her up. That'll do. We must get her down to the
+surgery. Take her by her shoulders; there. Get your arms well under her.
+Heave ho! Wait a minute till I settle her dress and get a good hold of
+her knees. Upsy daisy; march!'
+
+They went staggeringly, not because of the weight, but by reason of the
+giddiness which assailed Paul. He thought it had suddenly grown foggy,
+for there was a mist between him and all the dimly visible objects of
+the night There were coloured sparks in the mist by-and-by, and when
+once they had got their burden through the open hall and had laid it
+on a plain straight couch in the surgery, Paul was glad to sit down
+uninvited.
+
+'Take a sniff at that,' said the assistant, pressing an un-stoppered
+bottle into his hand.
+
+Paul obeyed him. The pungent ammonia brought the tears to his eyes and
+took his breath away, but it dispersed the fog and stilled the wheel
+which had been whirling in his head The assistant had taken off his
+coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves, and was going about his task with
+professional dexterity and coolness.
+
+'How did this happen?' he asked.
+
+He was Paul's senior by three years at most, but he had as magisterial
+and assured a manner as if he had been fifty.
+
+Paul told the story just as it happened.
+
+'Well,' said the assistant, 'this is a pretty grave old case, and so I
+tell you. You may find yourself in trouble over this.'
+
+'Find myself in trouble?' said Paul. 'Me?'
+
+'Yes,' said the assistant; 'you.'
+
+'You've got better work in hand than talkin' rubbish,' Paul retorted;
+'stick to it.'
+
+'Ah,' said the budding surgeon, 'well wait till the woman's conscious,
+if ever she is, and see what sort of a tale she has to tell.'
+
+'It's the simple truf he's tould ye,' said the patient, in a feeble
+voice. 'What do ye be tryin' to frighten him for?'
+
+'Oh, you're coming round, are you? asked the assistant; 'didn't expect
+it. That's a pretty nasty crack you've got.'
+
+'Twill take more than that to kill Norah MacMulty,' said the young
+woman, struggling into a sitting posture, and beginning mechanically to
+arrange her disordered dress. 'The MacMultys is a fine fightin' famly,
+and it runs in the blood to take a cracked skull quite kindly. I'll be
+takin' a glass at the Grapes, and then I'll be goin' home, but not till
+I've thanked ye kindly. Has anybody seen me bonnut?'
+
+'I shan't allow you to go to the Grapes to-night, my good woman,' said
+the assistant. 'Where do you live?'
+
+She named her address, a wretched little row of tenement houses some ten
+score yards away.
+
+'What's your trade?'
+
+'Me trade, is it?' she answered, with a feeble, good-humoured laugh.
+'Tis not much of a trade, anyhow; I'm a street-walker.'
+
+She made the statement wholly commonplace in tone, and gave it with as
+little reluctance or embarrassment as if she had laid claim to the most
+respectable calling in the world.
+
+The assistant stared and laughed, but she caught Paul's look of amazed
+horror.
+
+'Well,' she said, 'why wouldn't I be? I'll go to hell for it, av coorse,
+for that's God's will on all of us. Tis hard lines, too, for 'tis none
+so fine a life when ye've tried ut. Thank ye kindly, both of yez. I'd
+pay ye for ut, but ye'd not be takin' a poor girl's last shillin', I
+know, from the good-tempered purty face of ye.'
+
+'You're sweetly welcome,' said the assistant, busily washing his hands
+at the sink, and looking sideways at her. 'You're a queer fish, any
+way.'
+
+''Tis a queer fish I am,' she answered, 'an' by-an'-by they'll have
+the cookin' of me. Fried soul,' she said, with a faint laugh. 'Begobs!
+that's funny; I never thought o'that before. Fried soul!'
+
+'How old are you?' the assistant asked.
+
+'Faith,' she said, 'I'm just past two-an'-twinty. 'Tis an agein' life,
+an' I look more; but 'tis God's truf I'm tellin' ye.'
+
+'Very likely,' said the assistant, towelling his hands.
+
+'I'll go now,' said Norah MacMulty. 'I'm a trifle unsteady with the
+shakin', but the drink's out of me, worse luck! and I'll be able to
+walk.'
+
+'No calling at the Grapes, mind you,' said the assistant 'You'd better
+look in at the infirmary about eleven o'clock to-morrow.'
+
+'I'll do that,' she answered. 'Will ye be lendin' me your shoulder as
+far as the dure, young man? I'll be better in a minute.'
+
+Paul did as she requested, but he crawled with repulsion beneath her
+hand. The touch inspired him with loathing. He had lived a sheltered
+life, and had never seen an open abandonment to shame. He wondered why
+God allowed the degraded thing to live, and his heart ached with pity
+at the same time. He led her to the door, and then across the road. The
+assistant sent a curt 'Good-night' after him. He answered it, and the
+door dosed.
+
+'Can you walk alone now?' he asked.
+
+'I'll try,' she said, and made a staggering attempt at it.
+
+Paul caught her, or she would have fallen.
+
+'Take my arm,' he said to her, hardening his heart with an effort.
+
+He blessed the darkness and the quiet of the street, but before they had
+gone a score of yards a door opened in a house he knew, and Armstrong
+came out of it.
+
+In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the old man would have gone by
+dreaming, but he was alert enough at odd moments, and this chanced to be
+one of them. He saw Paul arm-in-arm with a bandaged drunken woman, and
+as he recognised his son the pair reeled together.
+
+'Paul!' he cried. 'Good God!'
+
+'I'm glad it's you, father,' said Paul. 'This poor creature fell at the
+corner yonder and cut her head terribly. I fetched young Marley to her
+from Dr. Hervey's, and he has seen to her. She wants to get home.'
+
+'I'll take the other side,' said Armstrong, and the three lurched slowly
+along in the dimness.
+
+'Ye're good people,' Norah MacMulty said when they had brought her to
+her door.
+
+A slattern woman answered Armstrong's knock, heard the news with no
+discernible emotion, and helped the arrival in as if she had been a
+sack of coals. Armstrong and Paul went home with few words. 'Don't be
+startled when you see me,' Paul said at the door. 'I helped to carry her
+to the doctor's, and she bled horribly.'
+
+It was not meant for an exaggeration, but he was unused to such scenes,
+and the woman's language more than anything else had helped to scare him
+from his self-possession. The hour was late already, reckoning by his
+custom. He washed, and went upstairs, but not to bed. He threw the
+window open and let in the soft, heavy night-air. Strange thoughts made
+a jumble in his mind. From his attic he could see, over the roofs of the
+houses opposite, the outlines of the Quarrymore Hills, clearly defined
+in the light of the rising moon. Half way between him and them the air
+was dimly red with the glow of the unseen furnaces in the valley. He
+heard the loud roar of the invisible fires, and now and then the clank
+of iron. His thoughts were not on these things, but he was vaguely
+conscious of them.
+
+He had taken his earliest look at the real tragedy of life. The peril of
+the woman's soul was the first thing to emerge clearly from the chaos of
+his thoughts. Her flippant, reckless acceptance of the certainty of
+her own damnation horrified him. Out of the streets, out of the bestial
+degradation of that life of shame and drink, into sheer hell? No chance?
+No hope? Surely Christ had died! But only for those who owned Him,
+and called upon Him! No, no, and a thousand times no! It was not to be
+believed, not to be borne. It was hateful, horrible, monstrous. The poor
+degraded thing had punishment enough already. She was in hell already.
+
+The bruised reed, the smoking flax! He fell upon his knees, and his soul
+seemed to melt in a flood of anguished pity. He wept passionately, with
+an incoherent clamour in his heart of 'God--God--God!'
+
+The storm wore itself out, but he knelt there long, with his hands on
+the window-sill, and his face buried in them. He had been too agitated
+to find words, and now he was too tired and empty even to wish for them.
+His eyes were dry, and his lips were harsh and salt with his tears.
+
+He looked up, and the whole night had changed. The moon rode high,
+and was nearly at the full. The skies were spangled with thousands on
+thousands of glittering stars. He thrust out his head and looked upward
+into the vast blue of the night Out from the stainless sky fell one
+warm, heavy drop full on his upturned forehead. To his worn thoughts it
+was like an angel's tear. He nestled beside the open window, and gazed
+from star to star, seeming idly to trace an intricate winding road of
+blue amongst them. Peace came back to him, an empty peace, no more than
+a mental languor. He slept at last, and awoke stiff and chill to find
+the light of morning creeping along a clouded east.
+
+All that day one purpose was present to his mind. When the day's work
+was over and he was free, he dressed and walked into the street He
+roamed up and down it from end to end, and several times he diverged
+from it to pace the road in which Norah MacMulty lived, and to linger
+about the house into which he had helped her. He had something to say to
+Norah MacMulty, but he caught no sight of her. He went home, and to bed.
+Next evening he paced the streets again. There was still no sign of her,
+but he encountered the assistant, who nodded to him in passing. Paul
+stopped him.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he said. 'Is there any news of that poor woman?'
+
+'Yes,' said the assistant. 'She's in for a touch of erysipelas. They
+kept her at the Infirmary to-day. If they'd left her at large she'd have
+killed herself.'
+
+'How?' said Paul.
+
+'Drink,' returned the assistant, and went his own way.
+
+So Paul ceased his wanderings for a while, and a fortnight had passed
+before he saw the woman again.
+
+It was a Sunday afternoon, and he was off for his customary lonely
+ramble. Armstrong always went upstairs for a nap after Sunday's dinner,
+and Paul was left without companionship.
+
+The woman was a mile away from her home, and was sitting on the lower
+steps of a stile by the side of the highway. She was tidily attired, and
+sober. Her recent illness had left a pensive look upon her face.
+
+'You're better?' said Paul, stopping in front of her.
+
+She looked up in some surprise.
+
+'Oh,' she answered. ''Tis you? I'm better, thank ye kindly. There's not
+many cares to ask.'
+
+'Do you remember,' Paul demanded, with a face whiter than her own, 'what
+you said at the doctor's the night you were hurt?'
+
+'No,' she replied. 'What was it?'
+
+'The doctor asked you what your trade was,' said Paul.
+
+'Yes,' she said; 'I mind it now.'
+
+'Did you mean it?' Paul asked.
+
+'Ye're a trifle over-young to turn parson,' she responded. 'Go your
+ways, child, and don't be bothering.'
+
+'Don't ask me to go yet,' said Paul 'I've something I want to say to
+you.' His voice stuck in his throat, and she turned her glance towards
+him in a new surprise. 'You said,' he went on with difficulty, 'that you
+were sure to go to hell.'
+
+'I'm that,' she answered dryly, drawing her shawl about her shoulders.
+
+'Well,' said Paul, 'you shan't. I'm not going to let you.' She laughed
+oddly with a mere ejaculation, and stared along the road. 'Do you ever
+think what hell is like?' he asked.
+
+'Would I drink if I didn't?' she answered without looking at him.
+
+'You can't put it away by drinking.'
+
+'I know that,' she answered, with a sudden sullen fierceness. Then, 'Ye
+mean well, I dare say, but ye're wastin' time. Go your ways.'
+
+'It's no use asking,' said Paul; 'I can't do it.' She looked up at him
+again, and he hurried on, with a dry husk in his throat: 'I can't rest
+for thinking of it I can't eat I can't sleep. I can't think of anything
+else.'
+
+A slight spasm contorted her lips for a mere instant, but she looked
+down the road again, and answered drearily:
+
+'That's a pity.'
+
+There was a tone of tired scorn in her words, but this, as it were, was
+only on the surface. There was something else below, and the sense of it
+urged him on.
+
+'You have a good face,' he said. 'You were not meant----'
+
+He checked himself.
+
+'Me poor boy,' she answered, with another motion to arrange her shawl,
+'ye can't tell me anything I don't know.'
+
+'I can tell you something you've forgotten,' said Paul. 'I don't care
+what you've done; you're God's child, and while there's life there's
+hope.'
+
+'Ye're not a man yet,' said Norah MacMulty; 'but if ever ye mean to be
+one, hould your tongue an' go.'
+
+'I don't mind hurting you if I can do you any good by it.' 'Ye can do me
+no good, nor yourself neither. Here's people coming along the road, and
+it's ten to one they'll know ye. Ye've no right to be seen talkin' to
+the likes of me at your age.'
+
+'I don't care for the people,' he answered. 'I don't care for anything
+but what I've got to say.'
+
+'Well,' she said, 'if you don't care, I'm sure I don't. 'Tis no odds to
+me what anybody thinks.'
+
+The people who approached were strangers, two men and two women of the
+working class. They passed the pair without notice, talking of their own
+affairs.
+
+'I'm only two days from the hospital,' said the girl when they were out
+of hearing, 'and me legs gives way underneath me. If 'twas not for that,
+I'd not stay here. Go now; I'm tired of ye.'
+
+'Look here,' said Paul, with the dry husk in his throat again, 'you
+don't like your life.'
+
+'Faith, then,' she answered, 'I do not.'
+
+'Then why not leave it?'
+
+'Ye're talking like a child. How the divvle _can_ I leave it?'
+
+'Leave it with me,' said Paul.
+
+That was what he had meant to say from the first, and now that he had
+spoken his word his difficulties seemed to fall away.
+
+'I can't earn full wages yet, but I can get two-thirds anywhere. I can
+make eighteen shillings a week, and I can live on half of it. You can
+have the other half, and there will be no need, then---- You will find
+something to do in time--sewing, or ironing, or something--and then it
+will be easier for us both.'
+
+'Ye're mad!' said Norah MacMulty.
+
+'No,' said Paul, 'I'm not mad. I'm going to save your soul, Norah.'
+
+She looked at him fixedly.
+
+'Ye mean it?' she asked.
+
+'I mean it,' he answered. 'I mean it in God's hearing.'
+
+'Well,' she said, 'I'm mightily obliged to ye.'
+
+'You're coming, Norah?'
+
+'What's your name?'
+
+'Armstrong--Paul Armstrong.'
+
+'I'll remember that,' she said. 'Good-bye to ye, Paul Armstrong.'
+
+'No,' said Paul, 'you will come to me. I shall go to look for work
+to-morrow, and as soon as I have found it I shall send for you, and you
+will come.'
+
+'D'ye want me to live with ye?' she asked.
+
+'No,' he answered with a strong shudder. She saw that clearly, and her
+colour changed. The swift distortion showed itself about her lips again.
+It passed away in an instant, but it left the mouth trembling. 'I want
+you to be away somewhere where nobody can say a word against you. I want
+to see you and talk to you sometimes, and know that you are going on
+prosperously.'
+
+'I'm mightily obliged to ye,' she said again. 'Ye're a good little fool,
+but a fool you are.'
+
+'I am not a fool for this, Norah. Nobody is a fool who tries to do God's
+work.'
+
+'Anybody's a fool that tries to do God's work that way,' she answered.
+
+'You say you are going to hell, Norah.'
+
+'And so I am, but not for ruinin' a child that's got hysterics. I can
+face the divvle without havin' that on my conscience. And I'll tell ye
+somethin' that'll maybe turn out useful when ye grow older. Ye think
+because I folly a callin' that no decent woman can think of and because
+ye know that I drink, that I've no pride of me own. Ye're mistaken, Paul
+Armstrong. If ye were ten years older, and I me own woman, I'd set these
+in your face. D'ye mind me now?' She shook her hands before her for
+an instant, and withdrew them under her shawl again. 'Ye mean well, I
+think, but ye're just in-sultin' past bearin', an' so you are! Would I
+live on the 'arnin's of a child? Oh, Mary, Mary, Mother o' God!' 'she
+burst out, 'look down an' see how I'm trodden in the mud. Go away, go
+away; go away, I tell ye! I know what I am. Right well I know what I am.
+But d'ye think I'm that?
+
+Black misery on your---- No. Ill not curse ye, for I believe ye meant
+well. But if ye're not gone, I've a scissors here, an' I'll do meself a
+mischief.'
+
+The outburst overwhelmed him. The man of the world who could have stood
+unmoved against it would have needs been brave and cool. The torrent of
+her passion swept him like a straw.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he stammered; 'I beg your pardon with all my heart
+and soul.'
+
+'Go!' she said.
+
+He obeyed her, and the episode of Norah MacMulty came to a close.
+
+'Paul,' said the Solitary, waking for a moment from the dream in which
+these old things acted themselves again before him, 'you were always a
+fool, but the folly of that time was better than to-day's.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Ralston was on the scene--Ralston in ripe middle age, massive and short
+of stature, with a square head and a billowy, sable-silvered head of
+hair; full lips, richly shadowed by his beard; an eye which twinkled
+like some bland star of humour at one minute and pierced like a gimlet
+at the next; a manner suavely dogged, jovially wilful, calmly hectoring,
+winning as the wiles of a child; a voice of husky sweetness, like a
+fog-bound clarion at times; a learning which, if it embraced nothing
+wholly, had squeezed some spot of vital juice out of well-nigh
+everything; wise, loquacious, masterful, _bon-vivant_; the most perfect
+talker of his day in England; half parson and half journalist; loyal to
+the bone; courageous to the bone; not an originating man, but original;
+a receiver, and, through his own personality, a transmitter of great
+thoughts to the masses; a fighting theologian; a fighting politician; a
+howling scoff to orthodoxy; a flying flag and peal of trumpet and tuck
+of drum to freedom everywhere. This was Ralston.
+
+What should bring Paul from the inky apron, and the dusty type-cases,
+and the battered old founts of metal, and the worm-eaten old founts of
+wood, and the slattern bankrupt office into the society of such a man as
+this?
+
+The Exile dreamed his dream, and a year was gone in a breath.
+
+The Armstrong household was asleep. It was one o'clock--noon of the
+slumberous hours. Paul slipped downstairs in his stocking-feet, struck
+a match, lit the kitchen gas, and drew on his boots. Then back came the
+creaking bolts of the door which led to the garden. Out went the gas,
+and Paul, matchbox in hand, sped stealthily to the office, the summer
+dews falling and the weeds smelling sweet. The battered padlock on the
+staple of the door had been a pure pretence for years past. It locked
+and opened as well without the aid of a key as with it Paul lifted the
+outer edge of the door in both hands and swung it back cautiously, to
+avoid the shriek it gave when merely thrust open, and then lifted it
+to its former place. He mounted the stairs--there was not a nail in his
+boots which did not know each shred of fraying timber in them--thridded
+an unerring way through the outspread lumber on the floor to the stand
+at which he commonly worked, set the gas-bracket blazing there, and
+began to stack type as if for dear life, but without a copy. The clock
+at Trinity struck the hours half a mile away. The clock at Christ's
+followed a second or two later, nearer and clearer. Then a mile off,
+soft and mellow, but unheard unless the ear waited for them, the bells
+of the Old Church chimed. Three o'clock was sounding, and the summer
+dark was at its deepest, when Paul secured a first proof of the work on
+which he had been engaged, and hid away the forme in a hollow beneath
+the stairs.
+
+In this wise he stole two hours from sleep nightly for a month; and at
+the end of that time, lo! a printed poem, molten and cast, and re-molten
+and re-cast, chiselled and fined and polished, and all in Paul's
+brain-factory, without a guiding touch of pen or pencil--the work of a
+year.
+
+The night after the completion of this task Ralston lectured for the
+Young Men's Christian Institute, and Paul was there. He was there right
+early, and secured a seat in the front row. The theme was 'In Memoriam.'
+Ralston talked and Paul listened. In five minutes Ralston was talking to
+Paul. Even now, in this strange review of the things that had helped or
+daunted him in all his days, the self-exiled Solitary, perched alone in
+his eyrie in the Rocky Mountains, encompassed by amorphous smoke-cloud,
+whilst the unseen river gnashed on its rocky teeth and howled--even now
+he felt the controlling magic of the voice and manner, even now he felt
+the triumph which sprang from the knowledge that this man chose him from
+the throng, played on him with splendid improvisations, made him the
+receptive and distributive instrument for his thoughts.
+
+'I know,' said the living Paul Armstrong, looking back on the dead
+aspiring creature he had been. 'Not a self-accusing thought! Pure
+worship in the eyes. And the visage! not this battered mask, but the
+face of eighteen! Not an ounce of alcohol ever fired his blood from his
+cradle till now. A meagre table all his life through--enough and barely
+enough. Clean hands and a pure heart, and burning ardour in the eyes.
+_I_ could talk to a lad like that. Eh, me!'
+
+The lecture was over; the audience had drained away; the great man and
+the Secretary were closeted for a minute; there was a chinking sound of
+gold. Ralston came out with a cheery 'Good-night,' and Paul was waiting
+at the head of the stairs.
+
+'Mr. Ralston,' said Paul.
+
+'Oho!' said Ralston in his sounding bass, hoarse like the deeper notes
+of a reed. 'My audience!'
+
+'Will you read this, sir?'
+
+Paul offered a paper-roll. The orator made a sideway skip out of the
+range of the tube, as if it had held an explosive. Paul's face fell
+woefully, and the great man laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.
+
+'Walk to the station,' he said, and rolled downstairs, Paul after him,
+and in seventh heaven. 'What have you there?' asked Ralston, as they
+reached the street. 'Prose? verse? print? manuscript?--what?'
+
+'It's in type,' said Paul. 'It is a poem, sir.'
+
+'What will you bet on that?' asked Ralston.
+
+'I'll take odds, sir,' said Paul 'It's never even betting.'
+
+'Ha!' The orator turned and stopped and looked at him. 'You are in my
+debt, young gentleman.'
+
+'For years past, sir.'
+
+'What? Eh?'
+
+'For years past.'
+
+'I never saw your face before to-night'
+
+'No, sir. I walk in on Sunday nights to hear you, but I go to the back
+of the gallery.'
+
+'You tramp twelve miles of a Sunday night to hear me?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Summer-time, eh?'
+
+'Any weather.'
+
+'Present the deadly tube. I'll stand the charge.' He thrust Paul's poem
+into the pocket of a loose alpaca overcoat 'I was saying that you were
+in my debt. You made me talk ten minutes longer than I ought to have
+done, and I've lost my train. There's not another for forty minutes.
+Come and march the platform.'
+
+'Thank you, sir.'
+
+'What's your name?'
+
+'Paul Armstrong, sir.'
+
+'Armstrong? Armstrong? Father's house here in the High Street? Printer
+and stationer? Ah! Old Bill Armstrong. Ayrshire Scotch. Anti-Corn Law.
+Villiers' Committee. I know him. How do you get on together--eh?'
+
+'My father, sir? He's the dearest friend I have in the world.'
+
+'That's as it should be. Tell me about yourself. What are you?'
+
+'I work in the office.'
+
+'Compositor?'
+
+'Compositor and pressman.'
+
+'Many a nugget has come out of that pocket What do you read? Tennyson, I
+know. Whom else?'
+
+'Anything I can get, Mr. Ralston.9
+
+'Tell me. You're eighteen at a guess. Tell me last year's love and this
+year's love, and I'll prophesy.'
+
+'It was Hazlitt at the beginning of last year, sir. Then it was Hunt,
+and Lamb. Now it's Thackeray.'
+
+'Keats anywhere?'
+
+'Oh! Keats?9 The tone was enough.
+
+'Favourite bit of Keats now?'
+
+'Oh, sir, you can't have favourite bits of Keats.'
+
+'Come! _The_ darling.'
+
+'"St Agnes,"' said Paul; 'Chapman's Homer, "The Nightingale,"
+"Hyperion."'
+
+'Oh! One love at a time.'
+
+'I can't, sir.'
+
+'Wordsworth?'
+
+'That's easier, Mr. Ralston. "The Intimations."' 'Byron?'
+
+'Oh! "The Don"--miles and miles, sir.' 'Where's Shakespeare--eh?'
+
+'In the bosom of God Almighty.'
+
+So cheerily the talk had gone, so rapidly, he had no taint of shyness
+left. Here was the man of his worship since he had first dared to play
+the pious truant from chapel, the one man of the whole world he esteemed
+the greatest and the wisest. They had talked for three minutes and he
+was at home with his deity, and yet had lost no tremor of the adoring
+thrill.
+
+'Good!' said Ralston. 'Dickens?' Paul's answer was nothing more than
+an inarticulate gurgle of pleasure, neither a laugh nor an exclamation.
+'Carlyle?' Paul was silent, and Ralston asked in a doubtful voice: 'Not
+read Carlyle?'
+
+'I'd go,' said Paul in a half whisper, 'from here to Chelsea on my hands
+and knees to see him.'
+
+'The best of magnets won't draw lead,' said Ralston, and at the time
+Paul was puzzled by the phrase, but he blushed with pleasure when he
+recalled it later on. 'And Browning?'
+
+'Ugh!' said Paul.
+
+'Ah, well, that's natural. But, mind you, Mr. Armstrong, in a year or
+two you'll feel humiliated to think of your present position.'
+
+They talked, marching up and down the platform, until the train came.
+
+'You have been very kind, sir,' said Paul when at last the dreaded bell
+rang and the distant engine screamed.
+
+'Have I?' asked Ralston. 'Remember it as a debt you'll owe to some
+aspiring youngster thirty years hence.'
+
+The train came up before anything further was said. They shook hands and
+parted.
+
+Then for days and weeks Paul waited for a letter, waylaying the postman
+every morning at the door. The letter came at last, brief and to the
+point:
+
+'Have read your poem. A bright promise--not yet an achievement. Command
+of language more evident than individual thought. Be more yourself, but
+go on in hope. Let nothing discourage. Remember that personal character
+reveals itself in art Lofty conduct breeds the lofty ideal.'
+
+The last phrase hit Paul hard. He was in search of the lofty ideal, and
+if lofty conduct would bring it, he meant to have it.
+
+He was strolling on the next Saturday afternoon, with Ralston's letter
+in his pocket Saturday was a half-holiday, and he was free to do with
+it what he pleased. His feet took him by an unfrequented way, and in
+the course of an hour's devious ramble he found himself on the canal
+spoil-bank. The cutting was perhaps a hundred feet deep, and the
+artificial mounds were old enough to be covered by turf and gorse. They
+bore here and there a tree, and in any hollow of the hills, where the
+chimneys and furnace-fires were hidden, it needed no special gift of
+the imagination to make a rolling prairie of the scene, or at least a
+grouse-peopled moor.
+
+Paul sat down in such a hollow and read Ralston's letter for the
+thousandth time, and resolved anew on lofty conduct Suddenly he was
+aware of an approaching noise of voices, and in a little while a rabble
+of some twenty men and youths came charging down the slope to where he
+lounged in communion with his own fancies. The small crowd was noisy and
+excited, and Paul noticed some pallid, staring faces as it hurried by.
+The whole contingent, wrangling and cursing unintelligibly, came to a
+sudden halt in the bend of the hollow. Here a man in corduroys and a
+rabbit-skin waistcoat called in a stentorian voice for order, and the
+babel gradually died down.
+
+'These are the draws,' said the man in the rabbit-skin waistcoat, waving
+a dirty scrap of paper in a dirtier hand--'these are the draws for the
+first encounter.'
+
+He began to read a list of names. The first was answered in a tone of
+bullying jocundity. The second and the third name each elicited a growl
+At the call of the fourth name there was no response.
+
+'Blades!' called the man in the rabbit-skin waistcoat--'Ikey Blades of
+Quanymoor!'
+
+Everybody turned to stare at Paul.
+
+'That's him,' said one. 'Course it is,' said another.
+
+'Bin yo Ikey Blades from Quarrymoor?' asked the man with the list.
+
+'No,' said Paul
+
+The man cursed, devoting himself and Paul to unnameable penalties.
+He wound up by asking Paul what he was doing. He wrapped this simple
+inquiry in a robe of blasphemies. 'Nothing particular,' Paul
+answered. 'What's the matter?' 'Tak' it easy with him,' said a burly,
+hoarse-voiced man. 'Beest thee i' the Major's pay?' 'Major?' asked Paul.
+'What Major?' 'Why--Major Fellowes!'
+
+'No,' said Paul, laughing. 'I've got no more to do with the police than
+thee hast. What is it, lads? A bit of a match, eh? Goo along. Need'st
+ha' no fear o' me.'
+
+He had been fighting his way out of the local dialect for half a dozen
+years, but it was expedient not to forget it here.
+
+'I dunno about that,' said the man with the waistcoat. 'Who bist?'
+
+'Armstrong's my naaem,' said Paul. 'I've lived i' the Barfield Road all
+my life.'
+
+'Can ye put 'em up?' was the next query. 'Why, yes,' said Paul. 'I can
+put 'em up if I see rayson for it.'
+
+'All right We'll tak' yo on in place of Ikey Blades. This is the fust
+chap yo'n ha' to tackle. Billy Tunks he is--comes from Virgin's End.'
+
+Billy Tunks (or Tonks, more probably) carried one of the pale and
+staring faces Paul had already noticed. He and Paul surveyed each other.
+
+The man in the rabbit-skin waistcoat, having arranged preliminaries,
+explained to Paul. This was 'a little bit of a friendly turn-up with
+the weepons of Natur',' intended to settle the disputed qualities of
+the youth of eight local parishes. Paul's presence, it appeared, was
+entirely providential, for, with the exception of the seven candidates
+here in search of glory, there was nobody present who had not at one
+time or another 'fowt' for money.
+
+'I suppose,' said Paul's informant, 'you've never fowt for money?'
+
+'No,' Paul answered, 'I've never fowt for money. Mek yourself easy on
+that score.'
+
+'Oh,' said the other, 'I wasn't castin' no suspicion. But it's just a
+quiet bit o' fun like for them as ain't been blooded in a reg'lar way.
+It's a bit o' fun for the young uns. Billy an' yov comes second.'
+
+'All right,' said Paul.
+
+He thought of Ralston's letter, and laughed. Lofty conduct breeds the
+lofty ideal. What would Ralston say to this, he wondered? Not that the
+thing had a touch of barbarism to his mind. It was rough, of course,
+but it was inspiring, and he was used to it. He had seen a great deal
+of this peculiar sport, and had a warm liking for it. Being in it was
+better than looking on, but even looking on was pleasant.
+
+'Now, lads,' said the master of the ceremonies, 'get to your corners.
+An', gentlemen-sports all, no shoutin'.'
+
+The business of the afternoon began in earnest A brace of lads stood up,
+stripped to the waist They shook hands, and set to work. The men were
+mere clowns, but the exhibition was anything but clownish. In that part
+of the world, at least, the traditions of the game were kept alive,
+and there was plenty of sound scientific fighting to be seen. Paul
+knew enough to recognise it when he saw it, and he had not watched
+two minutes before he knew that in this instance he was hopelessly
+outclassed.
+
+'I'm in for a hiding,' he said to himself. 'A chap in search of the
+lofty ideal will have to make up his mind to a pretty good hiding,
+too. If you're eating for honour, you mustn't leave anything on the
+trencher.' He watched the fight keenly, but he watched it with a
+heart that danced unevenly. 'Yes,' he thought; 'I shall have to take a
+bellyful.'
+
+The combat was brief and decisive.
+
+'Sivin an' a quarter minutes of a round,' said the master of the
+ceremonies; 'an' a pretty bit o' fightin.' Theed'st best get ready,'
+turning to Paul. 'The little un's pumped. He'll ask for a second
+helpin', but that'll finish him.'
+
+The prophecy was realized, and Paul found himself in a brief space of
+time standing hand in hand with Master Tonks, and looking him squarely
+in the eye. The fist Paul held in his own was like a mason's mallet, but
+its owner was of a clumsy and shambling build. Paul silently breathed
+the one word 'tactics,' and he and his opponent fell back from each
+other. He thought Master Tonk's attitude curiously awkward, but he had
+no guess as to what lay behind it. He sparred for an opening. It looked
+all opening, and he wondered, and half dropped his hands.
+
+'Goo in!' said somebody, in a jeering voice. 'Goo in, one or t'other on
+ye!'
+
+Paul went in, and Master Tonks went down. He was picked up, and knocked
+down again.
+
+'Why, what is it,' asked Paul. 'You've got no guard, lad.'
+
+'I told thee how it ud be,' said one of the onlookers, addressing Master
+Tonks, as he sat upon the turf nursing his nose in the hollow of his
+arm. 'Ye see, lads,' he continued, 'it's like this: This is Turn Tunks,
+this is--Billy's brother. They'm my nevews, the pair on 'em. Billy's
+laid up with a broken leg, and Turn's come here to show for him for the
+honour o' the family. I thought he knowed a bit about it, or I wouldn't
+ha' suffered him to come.'
+
+So this part of the contest ended in fiasco, but the next combat and the
+next were spirited and skilful The four victors in the first bout drew
+straws for the second. The winner of the first fight fell to Paul's
+share.
+
+'Lofty conduct!' said Paul to himself, with a little rueful grin. 'I'm
+in for it, and I must make the best of it.'
+
+He made the best of it for one fast five minutes, and all on a sudden
+he found himself looking at the sky, his opponent and the little crowd
+clean vanished. He was dreamy and quiet, and had no opinions about
+anything, and no interest in anything. Somebody picked him up and set
+him on somebody else's knee, where he was sponged and fanned. There was
+a faint suggestion in his mind to the effect that somebody, somewhere,
+had a shocking headache. Then he knew that one or two men were roughly
+helping him to dress. He himself mechanically aided this work, and
+by-and-by found himself watching a new encounter, aware by this time
+that the headache was his own. He handled nose, and upper-lip, and eye
+delicately, and came to the conclusion that he presented a picture to
+the gaze of man. Then, gradually pulling himself together, he watched
+the business of the day with tranquil interest.
+
+Four had had it out with four, and then two with two; and now the
+survivors of the match were engaged for the final prize of honour. Each
+man had fought twice already, and they were both too tired to do much
+execution upon each other; but at last Paul's late antagonist won, and
+the simple game was over. The man in the rabbit-skin waistcoat thanked
+Paul for having preserved the symmetry of the day.
+
+'Eight's a shapely little handful,' this authority said. 'It's the pick
+of the basket for a number, eight is. Sixteen's on-widdy, and it knocks
+a hole in a long summer's day. Four's a flash in the pan; but eight's a
+pretty little number.' He added genially: 'We'm all very much obliged to
+you, young man.'
+
+'Oh,' said Paul, 'I like to be neighbourly.'
+
+The muscles of his face were stiffening, and his inclination to laugh
+cost him a twinge.
+
+The man in the rabbit-skin waistcoat said his sentiment did him credit,
+and shook hands with him on the strength of it. The crowd went away as
+it had come, and left him where it found him. He was not going to walk
+home in broad daylight with such a visage as he carried. He paced about
+the trampled hollow to keep his blood in circulation, and in a little
+while the friendly darkness began to gather. Then he set out for home
+at leisure, choosing unlighted ways; and after a circuitous journey,
+climbed a gate and a garden wall or two, and landed at the office. There
+he made his toilet with the aid of a piece of yellow soap, a bucket of
+water, and a jack-towel, and then walked down the darkened garden to
+the house. He paced the paved yard on tiptoe, and peeping through the
+kitchen-window, saw his father seated alone at the fireside Armstrong
+looked up with his customary mild, abstracted gaze.
+
+'Why, Paul, lad!' he cried. 'Who's handled ye like that?'
+
+'There's no harm done, sir,' said Paul 'I've been putting a precept of
+Mr. Ralston's into effect in a way he never dreamt of.'
+
+'Ye've been fighting,' said his father, with a voice of reproof. 'Unless
+ye've a vera guid reason for it, that's a blackgyard way of settling
+differences.'
+
+'I'm like Othello, sir,' Paul answered: "Nought I did in hate, but all
+in honour." I had no difference with the gentleman who did this for me.
+We met and parted on the most excellent terms.'
+
+But even when Paul had told his story, Armstrong was un-appeased, and
+declined to see any form of humour in it.
+
+'It's just a wanton defacing of the Divine image,' he said, 'and a
+return upon the original beast.'
+
+Paul was constrained to let the incident rest there, but he comforted
+himself by fighting the battle over again in fancy. In this wise he beat
+the champion of the afternoon hands down, and came off without a scar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Armstrong and Paul were keeping house alone, and were playing chess
+together. The big eight-day clock ticked, the cat purred noisily on
+Armstrong's shoulder, the clear burning fire made slight crisp sounds
+in the grate, and now and then slack fell from the bars. The two sat in
+silence, poring over the board. Paul made a move.
+
+'That's vile play,' said Armstrong. 'Mate in four.'
+
+'Go on, sir,' Paul answered.
+
+'Chick,' said Armstrong.
+
+'But you lose your castle.'
+
+'Do I so? But I get a pawn for it, and chick again.'
+
+'Yes,' said Paul, 'I see.' He turned down his king and sat absent-eyed.
+
+'Ye're falling off, Paul,' said Armstrong, 'or else your mind's not on
+the game.'
+
+'To tell you the truth, sir,' Paul returned, sitting up with a sudden
+sprightliness, 'my mind's not on the game.'
+
+'Where is it, lad?'
+
+'Well, sir, it's in London.' 'London?'
+
+'London, sir. I can't stop here all my days. I want to see the world.'
+
+Armstrong rose to light his pipe at the gas. He dropped into his seat
+slowly, took the cat from his shoulder, and set it on his knees. The
+purr rose louder as he stroked lingeringly.
+
+'Ay!' he said after a long pause; 'ay, ay!'
+
+'I was afraid you wouldn't like it, sir,' said Paul 'I'm not misliking
+it, lad,' his father answered. 'I'm not misliking it What's your
+proposition, Paul?'
+
+'I don't know, sir. I've formed no plans. I don't know how to go about
+things. I'm stifling here.'
+
+'It's natural,' said Armstrong; 'I've stifled here for twenty years,
+lad. But then,' he added, with his own dry, wistful twinkle of a
+fleeting smile, 'I was born to stifle. What'll you do in the world,
+Paul, when ye get into it, if ye're out of it here?'
+
+'I don't know, sir. I shall try to do something.'
+
+'Ay!' said Armstrong again; 'ay, ay!'
+
+His gray-blue eyes dreamed behind his grizzled brows, and Paul sat
+watching him. There was a touching something in the gray, bowed figure
+and the gray patience of his face. Paul seemed to see him alone, thus
+dreaming.
+
+'I won't go, dad, unless you like.'
+
+'It's best, Paul; it's best.'
+
+A knock sounded at the front-door, and Paul walked down the long narrow
+passage which lay alongside the sitting-room and the shop, and admitted
+the major part of the household. They had been to a tea-meeting and
+concert at Ebenezer, and they all trooped chattering into the big
+kitchen, bringing a smell of frost and night air in their raiment.
+
+'Mary,' said Armstrong, at the first gap of silence, 'Paul is going to
+London.'
+
+Paul's heart swelled at this unlooked-for acceptance of his plans, but
+the household stood in wonder.
+
+'What's Paul got to go to London for?' asked Mrs. Armstrong.
+
+'We've talked it over within the last few minutes,' returned Armstrong.
+'The lad's coming to discretion. He wants to see the world. I'll find
+something for him to do there.'
+
+'William,' said his wife, 'you're mad.'
+
+Armstrong lit his pipe and said nothing, but the wife uplifted her voice
+and spoke.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'you've got your proper look on, as if you were half a
+million miles away, and me a insect, crawling about somewhere in another
+planet and not worthy of a thought I know your ways--I've got a right to
+know 'em after nine-and-thirty 'ears o' married life, I reckon. You've
+spoke your word, and you'll sooner die than go back on it. Another man
+'ud give some sort of a why an' a wherefore. But you! You're Sir Horacle,
+you are. You've opened your lips, and other folks' talk is just no more
+than so many dogs a-chelpin'! What's our Paul want to go to London
+for? Answer me that, if you please, William Armstrong. If it was in me,
+William, to be a downright vulgar woman, I'd take the poker to you.'
+
+Armstrong looked up with his swift, dry twinkle, and she laughed.
+She tried to make the laugh sound angry, but the effort was useless.
+Armstrong twinkled again, and she burst into a peal.
+
+'Children,' she said, wiping her eyes with the fringe of her shawl,
+'remember what I tell you. That's the best man in the world, but I hope
+to gracious goodness as none of you will ever grow up like him. He's
+enough to break the patience of a saint. If Job'd ha' lived with him,
+he'd ha' broke his head with one of his potsherds.'
+
+Then the household laughed at large, for of late years this was the
+fashion--this, or something very like it--in which all combative
+disputes had ended. It had not always been so. In the earlier years,
+which Paul could well remember, before the gray little man had achieved
+his triumph of speechless mastery, there had been scenes which bordered
+on the terrible.
+
+'And now,' said Mrs. Armstrong, 'what's our Paul to go to London for?'
+
+'He'll finish learning his business there,' said Armstrong. 'In two or
+three years' time he ought to be able to come back and take charge of
+the place. There's the nucleus of a good trade here, if it had energy
+and knowledge brought to bear on it.'
+
+There was an end of spoken opposition, and the fact that Paul was going
+to London was accepted. A month went by, and all arrangements were made.
+The Rev. Roderic Murchison had left Barfield, and had accepted a call
+from some congregation in the outskirts of the great city. He held a
+salaried post as well as Metropolitan secretary to his sect, and had
+become a person of importance. He was in association with a firm of
+printers who worked mainly for the big Nonconformist bodies, and an
+odour of sanctity was supposed, by the Armstrong household at least,
+to rest upon the labours upon which Paul was about to enter in their
+office. Paul had examples of the office craftsmanship set before him.
+Technically they were excellent, but their literary form was not of the
+highest order. He learned that a hundred and odd workmen were engaged,
+and he pictured them as a set of square-toes whose talk would be guarded
+and pious and narrow, for in his innocence he imagined the men who
+translated good books into type were necessarily good, and the men who
+translated into type the goody-goody were of that spiritual complexion.
+
+Paul and his father travelled up to London together on a Thursday.
+They found lodgings in Charterhouse Square at the house of a sprightly
+black-eyed lady, whose husband, long deceased, had been a Nonconformist
+minister. She was very smiling and gracious, and Paul thought her a
+charming woman, but he got out of her good books very early, and never
+knew how for years after.
+
+'Oh yes, Mr. Armstrong,' she said at the Sunday dinner, 'anybody would
+know you were from the country.'
+
+'How?' Paul asked.
+
+'By your hair,' said the lady.
+
+'Oh, well,' said Paul, 'I must get it cut London fashion.'
+
+Mrs. Bryne bit her lips and flashed a look at him. The boarders
+tittered, but Paul sat unconscious. He knew that ignorant people
+misplaced their aspirates at times, but Mrs. Bryne was a lady, and wore
+silk dresses on week-days.
+
+But he had sown a seed of misliking, and it had opportunity to ripen.
+Armstrong the elder, with that wholesale want of worldly wisdom which
+distinguished him, had arranged that Paul should have a room in Mrs.
+Bryne's house, with breakfast and supper on week-days and whole board
+on Sundays, on terms which fitted accurately with his earnings. He gave
+Paul a pound for pocket-money, and went away without a thought as to
+what the lad was to do for his daily dinner. This admirable business
+arrangement bore fruit, of course.
+
+At eight o'clock on a February morning Paul presented himself at the
+office. The day was foggy and bitter. The street-lamps were alight, and
+all the shops yet open were dull yellow with gas-lamps in the fog. He
+had to ask his way several times, and only one passenger in four or
+five took any notice of him, but he reached his destination as some
+neighbouring church clock boomed the hour out of the nowhere of the
+upper air. He announced himself by name to a man in a glass-case at the
+head of the stairs. The man gave him a surly side-way nod, and Paul, not
+understanding, waited for something more.
+
+'Upstairs, ye fool!' said the man.
+
+'It's a cold mornin',' said Paul. That nose o' yours looks a bit
+pinched with it. I've half a mind to warm it for you.'
+
+'Well,' said the surly man, 'how often do you want to be spoken to?'
+
+'Once is enough,' said Paul. 'Come outside and I'll gi' thee a lesson in
+manners.'
+
+The surly man declined this invitation, and slid down the glass in front
+of him. Paul mounted wrathfully. He was more grieved at himself than
+at the other fellow, because he had made up his mind to be civil to
+everybody, and above all things to put away the Barfield accent, which
+he could do quite easily when he thought about it.
+
+In the great room he entered there were rows on rows of compositors'
+frames, all dimly illuminated by a single gas-jet, and the air was thick
+with fog. One prematurely sharp-looking small boy was performing a sort
+of rhythmic dance with a shrill whistle for accompaniment. He had a big
+can of water, which he swung like a censer as he danced. The can had a
+small hole pierced in the bottom, and the boy was laying the dust When
+the can had yielded its last drop he took up a big broom and swept the
+place rapidly, keeping up his shrill whistle meanwhile.
+
+'Isn't it time somebody was here?' Paul asked at length.
+
+'Manday's a saint's day,' said the boy. 'You a-comin' to work 'ere?' he
+asked. Paul nodded. 'You'll know better next taime. Why, even the "O."
+doesn't come before naine on a Manday.'
+
+That was the fashionable Cockney dialect of the time. It is dead, as are
+the many fashions of Cockney speech which have followed it until now,
+and as the present accent will be in a year or two. It tickled Paul's
+ear, and to get more of it he beguiled the boy to talk.
+
+'Who's the "O."?' he asked
+
+'"O."?' said the boy sharply. 'Overseer.'
+
+'Why are they late on Monday?'
+
+'I suppose,' said the boy, 'they stop too late at church on Sanday. They
+are a pretty old ikey lot as works 'ere, and so I tell you.'
+
+Paul began to revise his opinion as to the probable character of his
+associates. But perhaps the boy was purposely misleading him. He thought
+it worth while to wait and see.
+
+'What's your name?' he asked, by way of keeping the conversation going.
+
+'Tom Ketling,' said the boy, 'but they calls me "Tat" for short, because
+I used to hang about outside Tattersall's and run errands. I picked
+up most of my education there. There ain't many of 'em as can teach me
+anything.' He broke off short in his confidences at the sound of a heavy
+shuffling footstep on the stairs. 'Oh, my!' he cried, 'this is a marble,
+and no error! How are you, Forty?'
+
+'You here?' said the man thus hailed. 'Why, how you _are_ reforming!'
+His voice had a deep chuckling husk in it, as if he had just finished an
+exhausting laugh, and his lungs still panted. His face and figure were
+vague in the fog and dimness of the place, but as he rolled and chuckled
+nearer Paul stared at him, not without reason. He was respectably
+attired at the first glance in a heavy overcoat of milled cloth, with
+facings of some sort of cheap imitation fur, and a silk-hat which,
+though creased in many places, was flatteringly oiled, and shone with a
+lustre to which its age bequeathed no right. He had a high collar which
+rose to the cheek-bone, and was severely starched, though yellow and
+serrated at the edges. His face was a flame of high colour, and his nose
+was a burlesque on the nose of Bardolph. It was not merely huge; it was
+portentous. It was of the size and shape of a well-grown winter pear,
+and it wagged as he walked, touching now one bloated cheek and now the
+other. It was garnished with many dark bosses, as if it were ornamented
+by round nails of a purple tone, and when once the owner had carried
+it fairly under the gas-jet it seemed as if it were the nose which
+shed such light as there was to struggle with the fog. 'You see it,'
+he cried, with the same short-winded chuckle. 'Everybody sees it
+Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!' He shook his head rapidly from side to side, and the
+amazing nose tapped either cheek in turn with an actual audible sound
+like the faintest clapping of hands. Apart from this deformity and the
+sanguine colour of his face he was a jolly-looking fellow, and his brown
+eyes twinkled as if they had been transparent, with a flickering light
+behind them. 'I got that,' he said, rubbing die nose with the palm
+of one hand, 'from my highly respectable grandfather. He was a great
+landowner, so I'm told, down Guildford way, and drank more port and
+brandy-punch than any man in England. This'--he fondled the nose
+again--'this skipped a generation. My highly respectable father's
+proboscis was pure Greek--Greek so pure, sir, that the late President
+of the Royal Academy has been known to follow him about London in a
+hansom-cab from dawn to dewy eve in the hope of catching its outline.
+Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!' He wagged the monstrous feature again. He stopped short
+with a ludicrous solemnity. 'Your highly respectable name is Armstrong?'
+he said with a voice and attitude of courtesy. 'I judged so. You are a
+turnover apprentice from the establishment of your highly respectable
+father in the country? Exactly. My highly respectable name is Warr, sir.
+I am sometimes known as Forty in recognition of a little feat of mine,
+in respect of which "let other lips," et cetera. I suppose that I have
+never told you----' He was in an attitude of extremest confidence, but
+he changed it with a flourish, 'I was told, sir, to be here to meet
+you. It is mine to initiate you into the highly respectable mysteries. I
+suppose I never told you '--the air of confidence was back again--'that
+I am the owner of an heirloom?'
+
+'I don't remember that you ever did,' Paul answered.
+
+'An heirloom,' the man with the nose exclaimed, 'an heirloom which--in
+short, a highly respectable heirloom--a work of art. This is varnishing
+day. Would you like to see the work of art varnished? Then come with
+me.' He laid aside the burlesque air, and said seriously: 'There will be
+nothing done here for an hour.'
+
+Paul followed him down the stairs and into the street, where the fog
+seemed thicker than before.
+
+'Is it often like this in the City?' he asked.
+
+'No,' said his companion; 'I regret to say it isn't We get very little
+open weather in the City at this time of year. As a rule, in February
+you find the City clouded.'
+
+'This is quite clouded enough for my taste,' said Paul, coughing and
+weeping.
+
+'My dear sir,' said Mr. Warr, 'this is merely Italian! Ah! I forgot You
+are fresh from the country. You think this foggy! Well, perhaps it is
+not quite so bright as we get it some days. But a real fog in London is
+a very different thing from this. In 'the great fog of January, '68,
+it happened very fortunately for me that the partner of my
+highly-respectable joys and sorrows had asked me to purchase a meat-axe.
+I hewed my way home by its aid, sir. When I reached London Bridge I was
+so fatigued that I was compelled to sit down, and to beguile the time I
+cut a portion of the fog in strips, and modelled the strips into a
+very handsome set of hat-pegs. They would have made a highly superior
+souvenir of an interesting occasion, but they were, unfortunately,
+stolen. By the way, if you happen to have sixpence about you I needn't
+ask for credit for the varnish. I hate debt as I hate the devil. Thank
+you, sir. This way.' He rolled into a gin-shop, and called for 'a
+quartern and two outs,' tendering Paul's coin in payment.
+
+Paul declined any share in the liquor. He was watchful, and as full of
+interest as a child. The battered pewter counter, with little pools of
+dirty liquid in its hollows; the green-painted, flat-bellied barrels
+with bands of faded gilding; the moist and filthy sawdust on the floor,
+with last week's odours in it and a mere sprinkling of clean sawdust
+on top, offering its hint of the timber-stacks in the yard next door
+to home; the winking gas with the fog-halo round it; the shirt-sleeved
+barman; the female habitual drunkard here for a dram thus early, and
+holding her glass in both shaking palms as if she warmed her hands at
+it; the ceiling, cobwebbed and clouded with gas-smoke; the gaping door,
+like a dead jaw that would have dropped but for the straps that held
+it--all these things beat themselves in on his intelligence as if they
+would make an eternal pressure there. It was as if the place had a moral
+physiognomy of its own, and as if through countless details he absorbed
+an instinct as to its daily life.
+
+'I suppose,' said Paul, 'you varnish that work of art pretty often?'
+
+'As often as I can,' Mr. Warr responded. 'But the varnish is costly,
+my credit is nowhere worth a tinker's damn, and I live in a chronic
+impecuniosity.'
+
+He varnished the work of art with a genuine relish, and, the process
+being over, he and Paul returned to the office, where signs of life were
+beginning to show themselves. The flare of some thirty or forty lighted
+gas-brackets made an inroad on the fog, and knots of men were laughing
+and talking. It very soon became clear to Paul's intelligence that the
+daily work and conversation of his new companions were not in any marked
+degree ruled or moulded by the influence of that religious literature
+with which they helped to furnish the world. They were neither better
+nor worse than the average British workman; but they certainly cursed
+a good deal, and a stiffish breeze of indecency blew through all their
+speech.
+
+In ten minutes every man was at his case, and silence reigned. The
+overseer--a dyspeptic, long-haired man, who looked like a dejected
+tragedian--interviewed the new-comer, supplied him with a certain amount
+of 'copy,' and left him to his devices. Mr. Warr worked by his side.
+That gentleman without the silk-hat came out bald, and without the
+fur-trimmed overcoat came out shabby, in a very threadbare old black
+rock. He wore a portentous pair of cuffs to match the antiquated
+collar, and these being slipped off and the coat-sleeves turned up
+for convenience in working, Paul wondered if any shirt or other
+under-garment kept them company. Any doubt he may have had on that point
+was dissipated early in the day, for Mr. Warr chancing to stoop with
+his head towards Paul, gave the young man a clear view of his bare
+back, between which and the world at large there was nothing but the
+threadbare coat.
+
+About half-past twelve o'clock the small boy whom Paul had encountered
+on his arrival began to move about from man to man with a strip of
+paper. Each man looked at the paper and spoke a single word. Then the
+boy invariably pronounced a word which sounded like 'vedge,' and the
+man either shook his head or nodded. Paul wondered what this might
+mean, until his turn came, when he found a choice of viands written in a
+scrawling hand upon the scrap of paper:
+
+'Boiled beef and carrots.
+
+'Boiled pork and pease-pudding.'
+
+'It's sixpence-halfpenny if you have it here, sixpence if you go out for
+it.'
+
+Paul made his choice, and the boy said 'Vedge?' in an accent of inquiry.
+
+'What's "vedge"?'
+
+The boy looked up in a momentary wonder, and then grinned knowingly, and
+shook his head.
+
+'What do you mean by "vedge"?'
+
+'Ah!' said the boy, 'you don't get over me.'
+
+'I'm not trying to get over you. I want to know what you mean.'
+
+'Oh yes,' said the boy; 'of course you do! They don't eat greens and
+taters where you come from! Oh dear no; not at all!'
+
+'That's it, is it? Then, I take vedge.'
+
+'If s an extra penny, mind you. You pays on Saturday.'
+
+The boy turned to Mr. Warr, who made his choice also.
+
+A little later a voice said 'Halt!' and there was a clatter of
+composing-sticks laid smartly down on the cases. Almost at the same
+instant the small boy came in with a pyramid of plates with flat tin
+covers. 'Beef and vedge,' shrilled the boy, and, setting down his
+burden, charged out again, returning instantly with another cry of
+'Beef, no vedge.' He was out and in again with a cry of 'Pork and
+vedge,' and out and in again with a cry of 'Pork, no vedge.' Then a
+shock-headed youth appeared with a basket foil of tin measures and a
+big can of black beer. He was met with an instant storm of chaff, and
+allusions of a Rabelaisian sort were made to one Mary for whom he would
+seem to have had a kindness. He departing, the men set themselves to the
+serious business of dinner, and, the meal being over, they gathered into
+groups, and smoked and talked, whilst the small boy cleared away.
+
+An aproned man in a very old skull cap of black silk, and a shabby
+frock-coat like Mr. Warr's, approached Paul and announced himself as
+'the Father of the Chapel.' He welcomed the young man with a curious
+formal courtesy, and aired scraps of Latin with which Paul was familiar
+from many years of study of the specimen-books of the type-founders,
+who used to exhibit the most exquisite specimens of the printers' art in
+quotations from Cicero. Mr. Warr borrowed sixpence on the plea of sudden
+and severe internal pains, and went out to varnish the work of art. He
+returned with a moist eye, and in the course of the afternoon twice or
+thrice dipped his bulbous nose into the letter 'e' box, and snored for a
+minute at a time among the types.
+
+Day followed day, and one day was like another. Saturday came, and Paul
+received his wages. He paid his first weekly bill at his boarding-house
+by aid of the remnant of the sovereign left for pocket-money. Next week
+saw him in debt. The third week saw him dinnerless. He knew the mistake
+his father had made, but it did not occur to him to take any active
+steps to remedy it Any lad of his years with a farthing's-worth of
+business faculty would have written home to explain his case, and would
+have gone into cheaper lodgings. Paul chose to do nothing, but to wander
+hungrily and vacantly through the city in the dinner-hour. He found
+no more varnish for the work of art, and his working comrade was less
+amiable than he had been. The week's end found him a little further
+in debt, in spite of abstention. His landlady, who thought he had been
+impertinent in that unconscious matter of the aspirate, was not disposed
+to be friendly.
+
+'I can tell by your looks,' she said, 'that you have been dissipating,
+and I know that you are wasting your money. I shall write and tell your
+father so.'
+
+'Very well,' said Paul.
+
+He was voracious at the supper-table, and that made the landlady no
+kinder to him. He ate like a wolf at every meal on Sunday, and his
+fellow-boarders chaffed him; but the lady of the house looked as if she
+would fain have poisoned him.
+
+She asked Paul into her private sitting-room after supper, and he
+accepted her invitation.
+
+'I shall expect a satisfactory settlement at the end of this week, Mr.
+Armstrong,' she said icily. 'Unless I get it from you I shall write to
+your home for it, and in any case I shall be obliged if you will leave.'
+
+'Very well,' said Paul.
+
+He thought all this rather unprosperous for a beginning of a free life,
+but he cared astonishingly little. If he had looked at the prospect, he
+might have begun to think it in a small way very serious. Recalling
+the time as he sat in his mountain eyrie, he found in it the first
+indication of his own irresponsibility, a knack of blinding himself to
+consequences.
+
+Monday came, and he dined. It did not seem worth while to deny himself
+any further. Tuesday came, and in the middle of the morning's work a
+man rapped on his case with a composing-stick, and said aloud, 'I call
+a Chapel.' Mr. Warr turned on Paul, and told him he must go outside and
+wait until such time as the meeting thus summoned was over. He and three
+apprentices clustered on the landing. The doors were closed, and they
+waited for half an hour.
+
+At the end of that time they were re-admitted, and Paul was solemnly
+escorted to the old man with the skull-cap.
+
+'I have a question to ask you, Mr. Armstrong,' the old gentleman began.
+'Were you properly indentured to this business.'
+
+'No,' said Paul. 'I picked up what I know about it in my father's
+office.'
+
+'You were never bound apprentice?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Thank you, Mr. Armstrong, that will do.'
+
+Paul went back to his case, and fell to work there, not caring to
+speculate much as to what had happened. The Father of the Chapel,
+accompanied by two or three of his companions, left the composing-room,
+were absent for some twenty minutes, and then filed solemnly back again.
+Shortly afterwards a clerk came in, with a pen behind his ear. He stood
+by Paul's side, and pronounced his name in a tone of question.
+
+'Here,' said Paul, looking round at him.
+
+'Just give your hands a bit of a rinse,' said the clerk, 'and put on
+your things and come down into the manager's office, will you?'
+
+Paul nodded, and went off to the sink and the jack-towel, wondering a
+little. When in due time he presented himself before the manager he was
+at once enlightened.
+
+'That is your week's money, Armstrong, and your services will not be
+required here further.'
+
+'Why not?' Paul asked.
+
+'No fault of yours,' the manager answered; 'but we find that you have
+not been regularly apprenticed to the trade. This is a Union house, and
+we are under Union rules.' Paul took up the half-sovereign and the small
+mound of silver the manager pushed towards him, and dropped it into
+his pocket coin by coin. 'I don't know your circumstances,' the manager
+continued, 'but if you're in want of work, I can put you in the way of
+it at once. There's a non-Union house close by, where I happen to know
+they're short of hands. I have written the address in case you care to
+try there. You needn't make it known to any of our men that I sent you
+there. Good-morning.'
+
+'I'm not going home,' said Paul to himself, as he walked into the street
+'I'm not going home, whatever happens.'
+
+He consulted the address he held in his hand, and walked towards it.
+His dinnerless wanderings of last week had taught him something of the
+intricacies of the City, if not much, and he chanced to know his way.
+The place he sought was high up at the top of a ramshackle old house in
+a narrow court, and a score of dispirited-looking men and youths were
+at work there. A tired dyspeptic, with a dusty patch of hair and rabbit
+teeth, approached him when he entered.
+
+'Yes,' he said, when Paul had explained his business; 'you can start in
+at once, and if you're any good you're safe for a month or two. I hope
+you're a steady worker,' he went on despondingly, as if he were quite
+hopeless. 'They're not a dependable lot here--not a dependable lot at
+all.'
+
+Paul took his place amongst the depressed little crowd at two o'clock
+that afternoon, and worked away among them until two o'clock on the
+following Saturday. A little before that hour it became evident that
+something was wrong. An excited little man ran into the dingy room, and
+began a whispered conversation with the tired dyspeptic.
+
+'But, my God!' said the latter, in a tearful voice; 'I _must_ have it
+I've got my men to pay.'
+
+At this everybody pricked an ear.
+
+'It's all right, old man,' said the other. 'Here's the cheque, and it's
+as good as the Bank of England. But I've only just this minute got it.
+It's after one o'clock, and it's Saturday, and the Bank's closed. What
+am I to do?
+
+'I don't care what you do. Get somebody to cash it for you, I suppose.
+I've got to have the money. Here's all the bills made out, and in ten
+minutes the men'll be waiting.'
+
+'Well,' said the man, I'll try. It ain't my fault, Johnny.'
+
+He ran out as excitedly as he had entered, and the men stopped work by
+common consent, and struggled into their coats.
+
+'It's bad enough,' said one of them, 'to work for two-thirds money even
+when you get it.'
+
+Nobody else said anything. The dyspeptic foreman drew a case out of
+a rack near the wall, and sat down upon it. The rest hung about
+dispiritedly, and waited for what might transpire.
+
+Two or three gathered round the imposing-surface.
+
+'Have a jeff?' said one.
+
+'If you like,' said another.
+
+'Come along,' said a third, turning up the sleeves of his coat
+
+Paul drew near, moved by curiosity.
+
+One of the men picked up three em quadrats from a case near at hand.
+An em quadrat is an elongated cube of type-metal, on which three of
+the elongated surfaces are plain, whilst the fourth bears grooved marks
+which indicate the fount of type to which it belongs. The cubes were
+used as dice. The men started with a halfpenny pool, and the first
+thrower cast three plain surfaces. He paid in three-halfpence. The
+second man threw with equal effect, and put in three-pence. The third
+man threw three nicked surfaces, and took the pool.
+
+Two or three more of the men who were waiting for the messenger's return
+rose and drew near. Then others came, and, at last, all but Paul were
+playing. The rules were simple enough: Any man who turned up three
+blanks paid the whole of the pool. One nicked surface took a third, two
+nicked surfaces two-thirds, three nicked surfaces the whole. Somebody
+cleared the whole, and the game started afresh. Paul threw down a
+halfpenny and joined in. As last comer he was last to play. The
+first throw cleared the pool. It was renewed, and the next throw took
+fourpence. Twopence remained. Three blanks doubled it--fourpence.
+Three blanks doubled it again--eightpence. Again three blanks doubled
+it--sixteenpence. A throw of one by common consent took sixpence. Three
+blanks made the shilling two. Three more blanks made two shillings four.
+Three more made it eight, and three more sixteen. Faces began to pale
+and hands to tremble. A single took six shillings after a good deal of
+wrangling, and ten shillings were left Paul threw for the ten shillings
+and swept the pool In all his life he had never known such a sensation,
+though the money as yet was mainly of paper slips.
+
+The cashier had negotiated his cheque somehow and somewhere, and was
+busy with the money. The men received their meagre wages, debts were
+paid, and the game went on. The stakes never again rose so high as at
+the first round in which Paul found himself engaged, but he still won
+heavily in proportion to the game, and continued to win until the end.
+He was then the only winner, and one of the losers asked him to pay for
+drinks. Paul, with a certain feeling of splendour and magnanimity, threw
+down half a sovereign.
+
+'Take it out of that,' he said.
+
+One of the despoiled poor devils clutched it, and they all went off
+together, leaving Paul to struggle into his overcoat and follow, if he
+pleased.
+
+'You made a pretty good thing out of that,'said the pockmarked cashier,
+swinging the key with which he waited to lock the door.
+
+'I'll see,' Paul answered.
+
+He emptied his pockets on the imposing-surface, and counted the pile. He
+had some fifty shillings over and above the week's wages.
+
+'You've been up their shirts to the tune of about six bob a man,' said
+the cashier. 'They'll be sorry before the week's out.'
+
+The winner was not affected by any consideration of that sort. He
+pouched the money, and took his way with a farewell nod. He had tasted
+a novel excitement, and the thrill was still in his blood He walked
+rapidly through the winter air towards his lodgings, dressed there in
+his best, and sallied out again, making straight for the Cock tavern.
+What suggested the idea to him he never knew, but he meant to take a
+pint of port with Will Waterproof at that famous hostel, which then
+stood on its own classic ground. The old Cock was not a palatial house,
+but it was splendid to the raw country lad, and he was half afraid to
+enter. He strode in looking as mannish and as townlike as he could, and
+seated himself in one of the boxes alone. A waiter approached him, a
+rotund man, in gouty-looking slippers, with a napkin across his arm.
+Was this, he wondered, the steward of the can, 'a shade more plump than
+common '?
+
+'Give me a chop,' said Paul, 'and a pint of port'
+
+'Chop, sir,' said the waiter; 'yes, sir. And a pint of----'
+
+'Port,' said Paul, and, being ignorant of the ways of such places,
+pulled out a handful of silver and asked 'How much?'
+
+'Bring the bill in due course, sir,' said the water gravely, and moving
+away, called the order for the chop up the chimney, as it seemed to the
+visitor, and then rolled off stealthily in the gouty slippers in search
+of the port. He brought it in a small decanter, which he polished
+assiduously as he walked along. Paul thought it looked very little for
+a pint, but made no comment. The waiter poured out a glass and retired.
+The experimenter had tasted elderberry once, but he knew no more of
+wine. The draught had relish fiery new, and it seemed to warm him
+everywhere at once. His mind grew exquisitely bright, and his thoughts
+were astonishingly vivid. He began to improvise verses, and they came
+with an ease which was quite startling. They seemed to unroll themselves
+before him, to reveal themselves line by line as if they had been in
+existence long ago, and some spell had suddenly made them visible to his
+intelligence. It was a moment of singular triumph, and it lasted until
+the grave waiter laid his chop before him. He ate keenly, and finished
+his pint of port A sort of beatific indolence was upon him, and he had
+no wish to move, but he thought the waiter looked at him, and he was
+uncertain as to whether he had a right to stay. He summoned the man and
+paid him, and gave him sixpence for himself. Then he walked into the
+street, but the exercise was not like walking. His step was quite firm
+and steady, but his whole frame felt light, as if he could have spurned
+the pavement with a foot, and have leaped the roadway at an easy bound.
+He thought of young Hotspur, and 'methinks it were an easy leap to pluck
+bright honour from the pale-faced moon.' He walked erect with his chin
+in the air, and regarded the men and women who passed him with a strange
+sense of being able to understand them all. There seemed to be a story
+in every face, and he felt vaguely and yet positively that he could read
+it if he chose. He found himself for the first time in Oxford Street
+without knowing either by what route he had reached it or what was the
+name of the thoroughfare. The crowds, the lights, the movement and the
+din of traffic were in themselves an intoxication. It gave him a sense
+of strength to be alone among them. Then all his thoughts trembled into
+a sudden swimming laxity, and his mood changed to one of deep sadness.
+He set himself to analyse an inward dumb reproach which filled him--to
+ask a reason for it--to trace it to some source. It seemed to form
+itself definitely on a sudden, and his winnings began to gall him
+bitterly. He had never gambled before, and now he felt the passion of
+greed into which he had been betrayed disgusting. He was ashamed of
+having played at all, and still more ashamed of the callousness of
+triumph in which he had walked away with his gains. He had pitied his
+associates. He had seen the misery of their estate quite clearly. And
+yet he had stooped to profit by their folly, and slattern wives and
+dirty little neglected children would be cold and hungry because of
+him before a week was over. He would return the money on Monday, every
+penny. He might have to pinch himself for a week or two, but he would do
+it.
+
+His mood sank lower and lower, and self-reproach grew at once more
+insistent and more urgent He felt homesick, and the populous street was
+like a desert. All the people who had seemed so warmly near to him were
+aloof and cold. He would have welcomed any companionship. The ebbing
+forces of the wine left him comfortless.
+
+In his complete ignorance and inexperience he supposed the pint of port
+to have had no effect on him. This up-and-down play of the emotions
+was not what he had read of as the result of wine on an unaccustomed
+drinker. His step was steady, his eye was clear, there was no confusion
+in his thoughts. It would be a perfectly safe thing to have another
+glass of wine and then go home. If he had been asked why he wished for
+more, he could not have given a reason. It was enough for the moment
+that he desired it.
+
+He found himself outside a flaring house, with the words 'Wine Shades
+'in a blaze of wind-fluttered gas above the door, and painted placards
+in the window: 'Wines from the Wood. Fine old Sherry, 10d., 8d., and 6d.
+per dock glass.' He had never tasted sherry. Sherry surely was the
+drink of many heroes. Shakespeare and Jonson drank it at the Mermaid.
+He entered the place, called for his wine--'Your best,' he said, as he
+threw his shilling on the counter--and sat down on a high stool to drink
+it. Before his glass was empty he had flashed back into high spirits
+again. He resumed his walk in a new exultation, and this time he knew
+enough to attribute it to the wine. What a superb boon it conferred upon
+the mind! How easy it seemed to soar out of sadness and loneliness into
+these exalted regions of friendship with all created things. He walked
+through the winter night with no knowledge of the route he took and with
+no care. He could ask his way home at any time.
+
+He came to the Metropolitan Music Hall in the Edgware Road, and suffered
+himself to be borne in by the crowd at the doors. The place and its
+like were strange to him. The performance seemed wholly contemptible
+and absurd. Men and women screamed with laughter and roared applause at
+jests which were either inane or hateful. A noisy man in a long-waisted
+overcoat, whose skirts swept the stage, a blonde wig, flying yellow
+whiskers, and a white hat at a raking angle, sang an idiotic song with
+patter interspersed between the verses. He described a visit received
+from Lord Off-his-Chump, Lady Off-her-Chump, and all the honourable
+Misses Off-their-Chumps. The witticisms convulsed Paul's neighbours and
+left him saturnine. He conceived a loathing and despite for the creature
+on the stage which he had never felt before for any living thing. The
+popular laughter and applause fed his personal hatred and disdain. He
+made an involuntary sound of contempt as the 'lion comique' went off.
+
+'Ah!' said a voice beside him. 'You don't like that?' Paul turned and
+looked at the man who had accosted him. He was evidently a foreigner,
+and his complexion was so jaundiced that he was the colour of a guinea.
+What should have been the whites of his eyes were of a deep yellow.
+His nose had a hook, high up, right between the eyes, and his lofty
+forehead, narrowing to a peak, was ridged like a ploughed field. His
+hair and beard and moustache were all crisp and curling, and their
+blackness was faintly streaked with gray.
+
+'You don't like that?' said the stranger again. 'No,' said Paul. I
+don't.'
+
+'The cruel thing about it,' said the stranger, 'is that other people
+do.'
+
+'Yes,' said Paul; 'that is the cruel thing about it.'
+
+He had the suspicion of strangers which is natural to most rustic folk
+in London, and his manner was purposely dry.
+
+'It strikes me,' said the yellow man, 'that you and I are about the only
+sensible people here. Come and have a drink.'
+
+'Thank you,'Paul returned, 'I don't drink with strangers.'
+
+'Oh, well,' said the other, 'that's a wise thing, too. Have a cigar?'
+
+'I don't smoke, thank you.'
+
+'And that again is a very sensible thing,' said the stranger, laughing.
+'I am a slave to tobacco. Smoking has ceased to be a pleasure since it
+became a necessity.'
+
+The man's speech had a faintly foreign sound, but his English was
+faultless. The very slight peculiarity which marked it was rather a
+level flatness in the tone than an accent It suggested a time when it
+had cost him an effort to speak the language, though the time had long
+passed away. The good-nature with which he accepted Paul's rebuff lulled
+the youngster's suspicions, and lulled it the more completely that the
+man turned away with a smiling nod and made no further attempt to enter
+into conversation.
+
+The lion comique was followed by a juggler, who appeared in the guise
+of a hotel waiter, and laid a table as if for breakfast. The table
+arranged, he began to perform the most extraordinary tricks with
+the things he had placed upon it Eggs, egg-cups, teapot, cream-jug,
+sugar-basin, breakfast bacon, loaf, bread-trencher, table-napkins,
+plates, knives, forks, and spoons spouted in a fountain from his hands.
+They seemed to be thrown into the air at random, and the man darted
+hither and thither about the stage to catch them. Then he was back at
+the table again amidst a storm of crockeryware, cutlery, and provisions,
+and each article as it descended was caught with an astonishing
+dexterity and set in its proper place with a swift exactness which
+looked like magic. The artist had a perfect aplomb, and he put off
+the catching of each article till the last fraction of the inevitable
+second, so that he seemed secure in perfect triumph and yet on the edge
+of instant failure. The house howled with excited laughter and applause,
+and Paul roared as loud as any. He was as sober as a judge so far as
+balance of body and clearness of speech and thought were concerned, but
+the wine was in his blood. He stamped, clapped hands, and shouted until
+the performer left the stage, and had twice returned and bowed He felt
+that the applause would not cease until he ceased to lead it.
+
+'That's better, eh?' said the man at Paul's side when the tumult was
+over.
+
+'Yes, by Jingo!' said Paul 'It _was_ better. Look here, I'm afraid I was
+rather rude to you a little while ago. Come and have a drink with me.'
+
+'With all the pleasure in life,' the stranger answered.
+
+They rose and pushed their way to the bar together. The stranger would
+like a brandy-and-soda. Paul would take a brandy-and-soda. They talked,
+and Paul thought his chance-found companion a remarkably agreeable
+fellow. He seemed to have been everywhere. He spoke familiarly of many
+European countries and of the United States. But somehow he faded away
+in a sort of mist, and Paul's last remembrance of him was that he was
+laughingly pulling at his arm and advising him to go home. He seemed to
+be blotted out suddenly in that very act.
+
+The Exile flashed back from his memories to himself, and awoke with a
+faint, gasping cry, for his mind had led him to the hour of the lost
+innocence. There are thousands on thousands of men who have lived purer
+lives than he who would yet deride the shaft which struck him, and laugh
+to think of its poignant power to wound. For the pure soul in the frail
+body, for the high hope and the will of burned cord, for the passion
+which hurries the senses and has no power to blind the conscience, there
+is a lasting purgatory open. How many a time since that hour of loss he
+had groaned in the silence of the night to think of it, and had taken
+his pillow in his teeth! To live the purer for the shame which bit so
+deep and keen? Ah, no; to overlay it with new shames, to groan over in
+new vigils.
+
+Easy for the callous good, who know neither sin nor virtue in extremes,
+who live somewhere about the level of a passable rectitude, and neither
+sink nor soar far from it--easy for them to dismiss this bitter truth
+for a mere sentimentalism; but there _is_ a virginity of the soul which
+evil custom cannot deflower. Woe to him who knows it, the chaste in wish
+and the unchaste in act, the rogue who values honour, the poltroon who
+would fain be brave! Ah, the goat-hoofed Satyr dancing there, drunk and
+leering, goatish in odour, unwashed and foul! Is it I? Is it I? And the
+anguished angel who weeps to look upon him. Is it I? Woe, woe is me, for
+I am each and both of these!
+
+Oh, goat-hoofed devil in man, and buffeted aspirant soul! Oh, divine
+God-man, who art myself, and whom I with my own hands do hourly crucify,
+whom I do scourge and crown with thorns and spit upon!
+
+Shall a man think thus but once only--shall he feed this burning iron
+in his breast but one sole time, and then go gaily afield in search
+of fresh agonies? Even so, and not once again only, but his lifetime
+through. This is why it is written that though you bray a fool in a
+mortar among bruised wheat with a pestle, yet will not his folly depart
+from him.
+
+Bowed earthward, with garments that stink of rain-soaked dye drying
+in the sunshine, with swollen features and boots that suck at the
+flagstones, bristled and bloated and bleared, I go by you. Had I never
+a concupiscence for honour? Is there no Christ-half that walks within me
+towards the place of rottenness and dead men's bones?
+
+Back to the vision again, not merely remembering, but living it all.
+
+Sick nausea, rising faintly yet heavily on the senses, swimming upward,
+as it were, along with a half-drowned rebeginning of life and the
+cognizance of things; deep loathing, and eyes like new-cast musket-balls
+for heat and weight; a frowsy air; a mouth like burned leather lined
+with vile odours. Forget it all in a mere instinct of distaste. Sink
+down with the sick wave. Swim down the sick wave in floating circles.
+Sway here and swing there at the bottom of the whirlpool, and up again
+towards the light which heaves slowly on the eye as it used to do at
+the upward turn after a dive, when the sunlight shone through the yellow
+water of the lock. Then on a sudden--daylight; and then, like a bursting
+shell on the brain, the truth.
+
+No use for the incredulous oath that the truth is false.
+
+'My God! it isn't--it can't be!'
+
+It can be--and it is. It _has_ been, and no mere episode of an eternity
+will wipe it out or can undo it There is the dirty blind torn away from
+one corner of the roller; there is the peeling paper on the wall, and
+the wall leprous where the paper has fallen away from it. Here, under
+his cheek, is the yellow malodorous pillow.
+
+The sick brain cannot think; the foul mouth seems to taste of his own
+soiled soul.
+
+And the woman, when he turns his leaden head, lying there, flushed--a
+girl of the bestial-handsome sort, with a smear of wet black hair on her
+brow, and a sensuous mouth, spurting breath like the lips of a swimmer
+half under water.
+
+Out of this--anywhere. Feverish haste in dressing. Robbed,
+too--penniless.
+
+What does that matter?
+
+It matters greatly, it would seem, for here is a hulking, pock-marked
+villain demanding money, and a shrieking, night-gowned virago hauling
+the fugitive back up the stairs with obscenities which match the place
+and himself and her.
+
+Then a flash in the heart, as if Hell's flame of shame and Heaven's
+lightning of righteous wrath lit it together. The pock-marked rascal is
+lying quiet on the ruddled bricks at the foot of the stairs. The woman's
+Voice curses until the corner is turned. A door slams. He is hatless and
+unwashed and dishevelled, standing in the Blackfriars Road.
+
+Never to be forgotten the taste of the morning river air; never to be
+forgotten the grain of the stone on which his elbows leaned, or the
+tawny coil of the waters below him; never to be forgotten the purple
+dome and dark cross of Paul's, with its edge of gold on one side and the
+rosy east away and away beyond it.
+
+His thoughts were the gasps of a devil's agony. He felt in gushes, like
+the welling of heart's blood. His soul clamoured 'Beast, beast, beast!'
+at him; 'how dare you foul my dwelling-place!'
+
+A warm trickle on his left hand, which had some dim associations of
+physical pain, bade him look at it; there was a yellow splinter of tooth
+sticking there. He warmed to think he had struck home, and then chilled
+as he asked: 'Wasn't the poor devil at his proper trade?' He pulled out
+the jagged splinter, and bound the wound with his handkerchief.
+
+To be twenty hours younger! To be only ten hours younger!
+
+Ting, ting, clang, clang 'Ting, ting, dang, clang! Ting, ting, clang,
+clang! Ting, ting, clang, clang! The bells of the clock-tower at
+Westminster. He made a fool's rhyme to them:
+
+
+'Down--In--my--home--'neath---the--clear--sky--No--thing--they--know
+--and--naught--care--I.'
+
+The big bell said 'Doom 'eight times.
+
+'Doom' the big bell seemed to say a ninth time, sweet and far. The
+Dreamer started, awoke, and knew his surroundings again. The ninth sound
+was the deep call of an engine whistle, rolled on river and rock and
+forest, and mellowed on many miles of smoky air. He sat with his chin on
+his hands, his heart yet tingling.
+
+'Was that how it happened, Paul?
+
+In his soul the question sounded, not in his ear. He answered the voice
+with a sighing 'Yes,' and then looked up and wondered.
+
+'Dad,' he said aloud, 'am I making confession? Do you follow these
+memories? Have I only to glass things in my mind for you to see them?'
+
+He waited in a sudden awe. He would make no answer of his own; he would
+lend the aid of no obscure mechanism of the brain to any tricking of
+himself. No answer came, and he sat disheartened, staring at the one
+visible hill which peered like a shadow from the other shadows in the
+midst of which he dwelt.
+
+A minute later he was ten years forward. He was seated in the
+smoking-room of the Victoria Hotel at Euston, and he and Ralston were
+alone. Ralston was talking.
+
+'The soul,' he said, 'makes experiments. It writes its notes on the
+body, and, having learned its own lesson, it throws the paper away. We
+lose to learn value. We shall know better next time. We have to sample
+our cargo, and we waste most of it, but we shall be refound for the next
+voayge. Bless God for an open-air penitence, but let us have no foul air
+of the cloister to turn repentance sour. So big a thing as the soul can
+afford to forgive so small a thing as the body.'
+
+'After divorce, perhaps,' said Paul; and fell to his dream again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The damp, river-scented earth slipped under his feet. The blare of a
+steam clarion, and the bang of a steam-driven drum, sounded, and the
+naphtha lamps of the merry-go-round and the circus gleamed through
+the fog. The infernal noise jigged on his brain-pan as if every flying
+crotchet and quaver stamped like the hoof of a little devil in the
+surface of his brain. The smell of the lamps was in his nostrils, and
+with it odours of tar and stables and orange-peel.
+
+Six-and-thirty hours had gone by since he had turned his back on
+Blackfriars Bridge. It was more than fifty hours since he had tasted
+food, and he had spent two days and a night in the open in fog and
+rain. He had been hungry, but the pangs of hunger had passed, and he was
+conscious of little but a cold nausea. He drew towards the light and the
+music mechanically. In front of him, illuminated by flaring lamps (which
+sparkled, he thought, as an apple of Sodom might have done when newly
+cut), was a placard fixed in an iron frame, with clamps which pierced
+the turf. 'One night only in Reading,' said the placard. Until then he
+had not known his whereabouts.
+
+There was no more custom for the merry-go-round, and its noisy organ
+ceased to play. He could hear the band within the circus now, the dull
+thud of hoofs on sawdusted earth, and the crack of a whip. A mirthless
+voice, with an intention of mirth in it, said, 'Look out! Catch her!
+She'll tumble!' A laugh spouted up from the spectators within, and was
+half smothered by the canvas of the show. Not far from him was a slit
+in the canvas wall, with a pale yellow spirit of light in it. A man came
+into the gleam.
+
+'Now, where,' the man asked, in a voice of anger, 'is that boy?
+
+The voice of some invisible person responded in an alternation between a
+hoarse bass and a shrill falsetto:
+
+'Perchance he wanders with the paling moon, where Delos' tower awaits
+the lagging dawn, which fronts not yet her summit, or perchance----'
+
+'Oh, go to 'ell!' said the voice that had first spoken. 'Where _is_ that
+boy?'
+
+'You might,' began the invisible person, in a cracked soprano, and
+concluded in a tone three octaves lower, 'have let me finish.'
+
+'Let you finish!' said the other. 'Would you finish? _Can_ you finish?
+He stood comically silhouetted--a balloon propped by two monstrous
+sausages and topped by a football. 'Billy,' he said, in a grave voice,
+after a minute's pause, 'where is that boy? Miriam can't do three turns.
+If Pauer isn't here in five minutes, the fat's in the fire.'
+
+'Well,' said the falsetto voice, 'why don't you'--the hoarse basso
+carried on the phrase--'send somebody else?'
+
+'Who am I to send? asked the man in view. 'I'd give five bob,' he added,
+'to get him here.'
+
+'Tell me where he is,' said Paul, 'and I'll get him for half the money,
+if I have to carry him.'
+
+The man to whom he spoke turned round and stared at him.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked.
+
+'A hungry vagabond,' said Paul, 'willing to earn a meal.'
+
+'Do you know the town?'
+
+'No; I'm a stranger.'
+
+'That,' said the fat man, pointing, 'leads to the gate. Turn to the
+right, run three hundred yards, and there's a pub on the left. You can't
+mistake it. Tell Herr Pauer he's waited for. Sixpence if you're smart.'
+
+'Shilling!' said Paul, half on the run already. The fat man hung fire.
+'Shilling!' said Paul again.
+
+'Shilling if he's here in ten minutes,' said the other.
+
+Paul ran. The fatigue which had weighed upon his limbs seemed gone. Once
+free of the clogging and slippery mire which had been wrought out of the
+wet turf by many travelling feet, he raced along the firm high-road at
+his best speed. He made a leap into the entrance-hall of the house which
+had been indicated to him, and narrowly escaped collision with a man who
+was moving smartly towards the street.
+
+'Hillo!' said the man, slipping nimbly on one side, and staring at him
+as he suddenly arrested himself.
+
+'Hillo!' said Paul. He was face to face with the jaundiced man of
+Saturday. 'Are you Herr Pauer?
+
+He was guided to the question by the man's attire. He was in some sort
+of circus uniform, and in act to button a huge shaggy overcoat above it.
+
+'That's my name,' said the other. 'What brings you here?'
+
+'You're wanted at the circus,' Paul answered, flushing and turning pale
+again.
+
+'All right,' said Herr Pauer, 'I'm going there. But what is up with you,
+my young friend?'
+
+'Nothing much,' Paul answered.
+
+'No?' said Herr Pauer, buttoning himself from throat to toes, and
+looking at him with a glittering eye. 'I should have thought quite
+differently. Come along with me.'
+
+Paul hung back, but he remembered the earned shilling. There was a
+smell of cooking in the house, and he was suddenly ravenous at the
+mere thought of food. The two turned into the road together, and walked
+smartly side by side. They reached the circus, and Herr Pauer motioned
+to Paul to enter.
+
+'Come in,' he said, seeing that the youngster lingered.
+
+Paul obeyed again, and was ushered into a small turfy space boxed in
+with canvas. A few loose boards were laid upon the ground by way of
+flooring. There was a table at one side, on which lay a small circular
+shaving mirror, a comb, a stick of cosmetic, and two open pots of
+porcelain, the larger one containing chalk, and the smaller half-filled
+with rouge.
+
+'Three minutes,' said the fat man, thrusting his head round the canvas
+partition; 'and short at that.'
+
+'All right,' returned Herr Pauer.
+
+He unbuttoned the overcoat, and let it slip to the ground, drew off
+a huge pair of rubber boots, and stood revealed in buckled pumps and
+stockings, silk breeches, a white waistcoat with gilt buttons, and a
+cut-away coat of light-blue cloth slashed with gold braid. He dipped his
+fingers in the powdered chalk, and rubbed his face, looking hard at Paul
+meanwhile, and growing ghastlier every second as the white obscured
+the yellow of his face. He stooped to the fallen overcoat, took an old
+hare's-foot from one of his pockets, and, dipping it in the rouge-pot,
+took the shaving-glass in hand, and, with many facial contortions,
+pursued his toilet, looking from his own reflection to Paul's face and
+back again with swift alternation. He pinched a bit of the cosmetic
+between thumb and finger, and dressed his eyelashes with it. Then he
+carefully drew an arched eyebrow, and paused to look at Paul again.
+The single brow gave him a comically elfin look, and Paul grinned; Herr
+Pauer drew another eyebrow, touched up his moustache, obliterated the
+gray upon his temples, and combed and twisted moustache and hair to his
+own satisfaction. Then he sat down on the table, and looked once more
+at his companion. Paul looked back at him, but felt his very eyeballs
+redden. The band beyond the screen played louder and louder. Then there
+came a great roar of applause, and Herr Pauer, keeping an eye on Paul
+till the last instant, walked away.
+
+The fat man entered a minute later.
+
+'The governor says you are to go inside,' he said, 'and wait till his
+turn's over. Here's your bob, anyhow. A bargain's a bargain, ain't it?'
+
+Paul accepted the proffered shilling, and slipped it into his pocket.
+Then he accompanied his guide, who pushed him through a labyrinth of
+props and stays, above which were ranged benches for the accommodation
+of the audience. They reached a spot from which they could see the
+whole space of the ring through a break between the benches. The fat man
+struck Paul as having somehow the look of keeping him in custody. But
+Herr Pauer appeared in the circle, and he forgot to think about that
+fancy. He wondered what his curiously-encountered chance-acquaintance
+was going to do. He had not long to wait, for two men in livery came on
+with a table, arranged in all respects as the conjurer's table had been
+arranged in the music-hall on Saturday night, and Herr Pauer proceeded
+to play precisely the tricks the conjurer had played. He was just as
+adroit and swift and' agile as the original, and the audience stamped
+and laughed and shouted.
+
+'Ah,' the fat man breathed in Paul's ear, 'the governor hasn't been away
+a month for nothing.'
+
+Paul turned, but his custodian seemed unconscious of him. The
+performance reached an end amidst a hurricane of applause, and Herr
+Pauer came back several times to bow his acknowledgments. The fat man
+seemed to wake, and, with a hand on Paul's shoulder, pushed him back
+amongst the props and stays until they reached the canvas room again.
+Somebody had placed a ragged cane-seated chair near the table, and Herr
+Pauer, who was already waiting, motioned his visitor into it. He seated
+himself on the table, with one trim leg swinging to and fro, and lit a
+cigar.
+
+'Now,' he said, rolling a cloud of smoke from his lips, 'what have you
+run away from?'
+
+'I haven't run away from anything,' said Paul.
+
+'Ah, well! we shall see about that. When I saw you on Saturday night
+you were flush of money. Now--so my man tells me--you call yourself
+a starving vagabond, and you run errands for a shilling. You are wet
+through, and you are mud all over. You have no hat, my young friend. You
+may just as well make a clean breast of it.'
+
+'I've nothing to make a clean breast of,' Paul answered sullenly.
+
+'Oh yes, you have,' said Herr Pauer. 'You were very tipsy on Saturday
+night. Were you ever tipsy before?'
+
+'No,'said Paul.
+
+'You had money,' said Herr Pauer. 'Was it your own?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+The answer was defiant and angry.
+
+'To do as you liked with? Didn't you owe any of it?
+
+'I owed something.'
+
+'Got tipsy. Got cleared out. Hadn't the pluck to go home. That about the
+size of it?'
+
+'Yes,' said Paul, 'that's about the size of it.'
+
+'No hat,' Herr Pauer went on comfortably. 'Out all night. Sunday
+morning. Empty pockets. Religious landlady.'
+
+'How do you know?' Paul asked.
+
+'You told me about the landlady. The rest is easy enough. What are you
+going to do?'
+
+'I don't know. I haven't thought about it.'
+
+'You are a shiftless young devil, I must say. Doesn't it occur to you to
+think you _are_ a shiftless young devil--eh?'
+
+'I think it does,' said Paul with extreme inward bitterness, 'now that
+you come to mention it.'
+
+'Come now,' said Herr Pauer, shifting his seat on the table and turning
+to face the lad, 'you shall not take that tone. I tell you you shall not
+take it, because it is a wrong and dangerous tone. You have done things
+that you are ashamed of. You shall have the goodness to be ashamed of
+them like a man, and not like a fool. Now, what are you going to do?'
+
+'I can earn a living,' Paul answered. 'I've got a trade between my
+fingers.'
+
+'What is it?'
+
+'I'm a compositor. I can do a man's work, if I can only earn two-thirds
+of a man's wages.'
+
+'That is all very well. But it's not quite what I mean. You have a
+home?'
+
+Paul laid his face in his hands and groaned. He was so ashamed at this
+that he had no courage to undo his own act. He sat with his face still
+hidden.
+
+'You will go straight home to-morrow,' said Herr Pauer, rising from the
+table. The culprit shook his head. 'Tomorrow,' Herr Pauer reiterated.
+The culprit shook his head again. 'They will kill the fatted calf,' said
+Herr Pauer.
+
+'Oh, no, they won't,' said Paul
+
+His father might be moved to do it, but not the rest. Oh, no, not the
+rest. And on the whole he would rather not have the fatted calf. He
+would prefer any desolation to forgiveness. Forgiveness must be preceded
+by knowledge, and the thought of that was unendurable.
+
+'Do you reckon,' asked Herr Pauer, 'that you are ever going to see your
+folks again?'
+
+Paul said nothing, and the circus proprietor moved back to his seat
+on the table. The circus band played close by, and at times the people
+cheered But in the little canvas box of a room there was silence for a
+long while Before it was broken the fat man came with a message.
+
+'Poor Gill's no use to-night, governor; his ankle's worse than ever.'
+
+'All right,' said Herr Pauer. 'I'll take an extra turn. Tell me when I'm
+wanted.'
+
+'Saltanelli's off in a minute'
+
+'I'll follow.'
+
+The fat man withdrew, and Herr Pauer, having carefully balanced the
+stump of his cigar on the edge of the table, went after him. Paul waited
+for half a minute, and then stole out The fat man faced him.
+
+'Where are you going to?'
+
+'What business is that of yours?' Paul asked
+
+'Governor's orders was you was to stop till he came back again.'
+
+'Suppose I refuse to stop?'
+
+'You can make a row if you like,' the fat man said wheezingly; 'but the
+governor's orders is the governor's orders. The governor says, "Keep
+that young chap till I come back again." There's plenty here to do it.'
+
+'Very well,' said Paul, noticing half-a-dozen loungers in the canvas
+passage.
+
+He went back and took his former place The savage appetite he had felt
+half an hour earlier had gone, and the empty nausea was back again. He
+had not heart enough left to care for anything. When the owner of the
+tent returned he brought a black bottle in his hand, and one of the
+liveried men came in behind him with a jug and glasses.
+
+'I take one between turns,' said Herr Pauer--'never more One is a
+pick-me-up. Anything more than one is wrong.' He poured a stiff dose
+of rum into either glass, and looking towards Paul, water-jug in hand,
+said, 'Say when.'
+
+'None for me,' Paul answered. 'I never touched the cursed stuff till
+Saturday. I'll never touch it again.'
+
+'Nonsense!' his companion answered, filling up the glass and pushing it
+towards him. 'Your teeth are chattering. Do you think because you have
+been a fool in one way that you have a right to be a fool in another?'
+
+Paul sipped and shuddered, but in a second or two--no more--a faint
+sense of returning warmth stole through him. He sipped again, and the
+faint glow grew stronger. He took a pull which half emptied the tumbler,
+and the spirit made him cough and brought the tears to his eyes; but he
+felt his numbed limbs again. Pauer had relit the stump of his cigar and
+taken his old place on the table.
+
+'It's not any part of my usual life-business,'he said, 'to do what I am
+doing now, but I like odd things, and it is an odd thing that I should
+meet you here. Besides that, I have been a fool in my time, and a
+fellow-feeling makes us kind. I shall put you up to-night, because
+you're a decent young chap, and a greenhorn. You shall have your clothes
+dried and brushed, and you shall be made decent to look at; and you
+shall get a hat, and in the morning you shall go home.'
+
+'You're very kind,' said Paul, 'but I'm not going to take your help on
+false pretences. I shan't go home.'
+
+'I will chance that,' said Herr Pauer. 'Finish your drink and put that
+coat on. You're shivering again.'
+
+Paul obeyed sleepily. Herr Pauer drew a penknife from his pocket and
+impaled the last inch of his cigar with it. He sat puffing there, and
+sat looking at his guest, or prisoner, and Paul looked at him drowsily
+in turn until Herr Pauer's head seemed to swell and fill the canvas
+box. The noise of the band came in gushes, as if his ears were now under
+water and now clear of it The head went on swelling, and the sound of
+the music grew fainter. He was deliciously warm, and he had a feeling of
+being lifted and gently balanced to and fro as if he were in a hammock.
+After this he forgot everything until he felt Pauer's hand on his
+shoulder, and started broad awake, with a clear sense that the spaces
+close at hand which had been so crammed with life a little while ago
+were all dark and deserted.
+
+'Time to go,' said Pauer. 'No, never mind the coat.'
+
+Paul was struggling out of it. 'I have another.' He held his arms abroad
+to show that he was already provided, and the lad rose to his feet 'Take
+this,' said Pauer, fixing a rough unlined cap upon his head with both
+hands. 'It will look less odd, and it's better than nothing.' He
+turned out the lamp to its last spark, and then with a puff of breath
+extinguished it altogether. 'Tu m'attends, George?' he called to
+somebody outside.
+
+'Che d'addends,' said a voice at a little distance; and Paul, guided by
+Pauer's hand upon his arm, groped his way towards it.
+
+In the pale light outside the tent, the fog having cleared away, and a
+thin strip of moon hanging over the river, Paul dimly discerned a stout,
+broad-shouldered man of brief stature, who was half buried in a big fur
+overcoat An eyeglass shone faintly beneath the brim of his silk hat
+The three made their way across the slippery field, and on to the firm
+high-road. They reached the inn to which Paul had run as a messenger a
+little while ago, and Pauer led the way to an upstair room where supper
+was laid, and a bright fire was blazing on the hearth. The guest needed
+no second invitation to be seated, but he made a poor meal, in spite
+of the best intentions. His companions disregarded him for a time, and
+spoke in a language he did not understand. He tried to disconnect and
+isolate their words, but they all seemed to run together. He fancied
+that Pauer talked in one tongue and his friend in another, but he knew
+later that this was a mere question of accent. When Paul was growing
+sleepy again the man with the eyeglass spoke in English.
+
+'Ask him, then.'
+
+'My friend here,' said Pauer, 'Mr. George Darco, wants a smart, handy
+youngster. If you can give us a satisfactory account of how you came
+into your present condition, he will find you employment.'
+
+Paul looked from one to the other, and both men regarded him seriously.
+He blushed furiously, and his eyes fell.
+
+'I suppose,' said Pauer, 'that you don't remember much of what you said
+to me on Saturday night?
+
+'I don't know,' Paul answered.
+
+'Do you remember that I told you I was going with my show to Castle
+Barfield?
+
+'No,' said Paul.
+
+'Do you remember writing your father's address in my pocket-book, and
+telling me that he would do my printing for nothing if I told him I was
+a friend of yours?'
+
+'No,' said Paul again. 'I didn't know I was so bad as that.'
+
+'Do you remember a long screed you gave me about manly purity?'
+
+'No,' said Paul once more. His voice would barely obey him.
+
+'You went off in tow with that young woman. Do you remember that?'
+
+'I know I did. I don't remember it.'
+
+'She cleared you out, I suppose?' 'Yes.'
+
+'And you were ashamed to go home? You hadn't money to pay your landlady?
+
+'It wasn't that.'
+
+'What was it, then?
+
+'For God's sake don't ask me! I can't bear to think of it.
+
+And then it all came out in an incoherent burst, through savagely choked
+tears. He had lost his honour. He was lowered in his own eyes. He would
+never be able to respect himself again. The two men stared at all this,
+wondering what lay behind it, until on a sudden the enigma became
+clear to both of them. The man with the eyeglass laughed like a horse,
+whinnying and neighing in mirth unrestrainable. Paul blundered blindly
+at the door, but Pauer stepped nimbly and set his back against it.
+
+'You young idiot!' he said in a friendly voice, which had a little
+quiver in it which was not inspired by merriment.
+
+Mr. George Darco continued to laugh until he rolled from his chair to
+the floor. He rose gasping and weeping.
+
+'Oh,' he said, 'vos there efer any think so vunny? Oh, somepoty holt me.
+I shall tie of it.'
+
+He recovered slowly, and seeing how deeply his laughter wounded the
+object of it, he tried to look solemn, but broke out again. Pauer spoke
+sharply to him in the foreign tongue he had used before, and he subdued
+himself.
+
+'Go back to your chair and sit down,' said Pauer, laying a hand on
+Paul's shoulder. 'Don't make mountains out of molehills.'
+
+The lad allowed himself to be pushed into a seat
+
+'It's all very well for you, you glass-eyed old reprobate,' said Pauer,
+speaking in English. 'I can understand the boy if you can't.'
+
+'You!' gasped Darco, with a new spurt of laughter. 'You!'
+
+'Yes,' said Pauer, 'I.' His tone was angry, and his friend, after a
+humorous glance at him, poured out a glass of beer and drank it, but
+said no more. 'Stay there till I come back, said Pauer a minute or so
+later. 'I'll be back in a jiffy.'
+
+Darco made a renewed onslaught on the cold boiled beef, as if he
+had been famishing. Paul sat still and stared at the fire. He was a
+compendium of shames, and whether he were more ashamed of his crime or
+his confession he could not tell. Pauer came back, accompanied by a man
+who looked like a hostler. The man carried a lighted candle and chewed
+thoughtfully at a straw.
+
+'You'd better go to bed now,' said Pauer. 'This man will show you the
+way. When you're undressed, give him your clothes, and he'll have them
+dried and brushed for you by morning.'
+
+Paul obeyed, and when he had handed over his clothes to the hostler's
+care he went to bed, and listened for awhile to the murmuring voices of
+Pauer and Darco, who were now immediately beneath him. His last resolve
+before he went to sleep was that in the morning he would go into the
+town and try to find work at his own trade; but he had begun to learn
+that he was born to drift, and he drifted. His clothes were brought to
+him clean and dry, and he turned the false cuffs and the collar he wore,
+so that he made himself in his own way sufficiently presentable, and
+just as he had finished dressing Pauer came into his room. There was a
+plentiful breakfast downstairs, and it was of a better quality than the
+aspect of the house might have seemed to warrant Paul did fall justice
+to it, and when the cloth was cleared Darco laid writing materials on
+the table. He said that his sight was failing, and that he had been
+advised to rest his eyes as much as possible. He would be obliged if
+Paul would write a letter for him from dictation. He dictated a lengthy
+business letter setting forth the terms on which he was willing to
+accept the management of a theatrical provincial tour, and when it was
+finished he asked Pauer to read it.
+
+'That's all right,' said Pauer. 'Good legible fist. Well spelled.
+Punctuation and capitals all right.'
+
+'Ferry well,' said Darco. 'If the younk man wants a chop, I can give him
+one. Dwenty shillings a veek, and meals at the mittle of the tay.'
+
+'What is the work?' Paul asked.
+
+'To be my brivate zecretary,' said Darco, 'and to dravel with me through
+the gountry.'
+
+'When am I to begin?'
+
+'Now,' said Darco.
+
+Paul sat down at the table, and his new employer dictated a great number
+of letters to him, all offering engagements to ladies and gentlemen, at
+salaries ranging from one pound to four pounds ten.
+
+'What's all that for, George?' asked Pauer, who was sitting idly smoking
+by the fire.
+
+'That is for Golding,' Darco announced. 'Younk Evans takes the
+management, but I haf the gontrol.'
+
+'Getting your hands pretty full, ain't you, George?'
+
+'Ah!' said Darco. 'Vait till I get my London theatre. I should haf been
+in London lonk ako if it had not been for Barton. He gild the boots that
+lace the golden legs.'
+
+'What did he do?' asked Pauer.
+
+'Gild the boots that lace the golden legs.'
+
+'Killed the goose that lays the golden eggs, do you mean?'
+
+'Man alife!' ejaculated Darco. 'I zaid zo.'
+
+'You said distinctly,' said Pauer, '"gild the boots that lace the golden
+legs."'
+
+'Ferry well,' said Darco. 'I zay zo. Vot _are_ you talking apout?'
+
+Pauer looked at his watch.
+
+'I must settle up and march, George,' he said 'If you carry that
+business through, let me know. I'm willing to join.'
+
+He followed his circus, which, as Paul gathered, had made a start at
+five o'clock that morning, and Darco and his new secretary took train
+for London. The two had a second-class carriage to themselves.
+
+'You haf lodgings somevares--eh? Darco asked.
+
+'In Charterhouse Square,'Paul answered.
+
+'That is too far away,' said his employer. 'I lif at Hamp-stead. You
+must get lotchings glose by me. You haf got no money?'
+
+'No money,' said Paul.
+
+'That is a vife-bound node,' said Darco. 'Co to your lotchings and bay
+your pill. I shall stop it out of your zalery. Then you will gome to me
+at this attress.' He gave minute directions about omnibuses green and
+red and yellow, and all these Paul stored away in his memory as well as
+he could. 'Now, berhabs,' said his employer, 'you think I am a vool to
+gif you a vife-bound node. But if you are not honest I shall be rit of
+you jeaply, and I shall know at vonce.'
+
+Paul fired a little at this.
+
+'If you don't think I am to be trusted you had better not employ me.'
+
+'That is all right,' said Darco. 'I am Cheorge Dargo. I do things my own
+vay. Look here. Are you vond of imidading beobles?'
+
+'No,' said Paul; 'not that I know of.'
+
+'Don't pegin on me,' said Darco. 'There is everypody thinks he gan
+imidade me. All the beobles in all my gombanies dry it on. But bevore
+you can imidade a man he must haf zome beguliaridies. Now, I hafen't got
+any beguliaridies, and zo it's no good drying to imidade me.'
+
+They parted at the London terminus. Paul made his way to Charterhouse
+Square, where he was received with marked disfavour. He paid his bill,
+packed his trunk--a small affair which he could shoulder easily--and set
+put for Darco's house. It was a little house, but it stood by itself
+in a very trim garden, and it was furnished in a style which made Paul
+gasp. He had been very poorly bred, and he had never had access to such
+a place in all his life before. The bevelled Venetian mirrors in
+their gilded frames, the rose-coloured blinds, the rich brocades and
+glittering gilding of the chairs, the Chinese dragons in porcelain, the
+very tongs and poker and fire-shovel of cut brass, astonished him. He
+thought that his employer must be a Croesus. This faith was confirmed
+when he was called into the library, where there was a wealth of books,
+nobly bound.
+
+'That gollection,' said Darco, 'gost me two thousand bounds. I am still
+adding to it. Here is an original Bigvig, the Bigvig of Jarles Tickens,
+with all the green covers bound with it up. Here is "Ton Quigsotte,"
+the first etition in Sbanish. Here is the "Dreacle Piple," berfect, from
+tidel page to the last line of Revelations. Here is efery blay-pill
+that has ever been issued at Her Majesty's Theatre from the time it vas
+opened until now.' He patted and fondled his treasure with a smiling
+pride and affection. 'They are not to be touched,' he said, 'on any
+bretext. Nopoty stobs in my house a minute who touches my books. I am
+Cheorge Dargo, ant ven I zay a thing I mean it' He pointed to a door.
+'Through that,' he said, 'is a lafadory. You can vash your hands and
+gome and haf lunge.'
+
+Paul obeyed, and at the luncheon-table was introduced to Mrs. Darco, a
+lean brunette, who by way of establishing her own dignity was sulkily
+disdainful of the newcomer. He was glad to escape into the library,
+where Darco set him to work on more correspondence--an endless whirl of
+it, diversified with family skirmishes.
+
+'Now, who the tevil has been mettling again with my babers? I haf dolt
+eferybody I will not haf my babers mettled.' Then a dash to the door,
+and an inquiry trumpeted up the stairway. 'Who the tevil has been
+mettling with my babers?'
+
+Then a shrill inquiry from above.
+
+'What's the matter, George?'
+
+'Nothings. I know where I but it now. I will not haf my babers mettled.'
+
+Then more dictation, the dictator waddling fiercely across the room and
+back again for ten minutes or so. Then a rush to the door, and a new
+call upstairs.
+
+'Who the tevil---- Oh, it's all right I remember where
+
+I put it.'
+
+Then more dictation, and a third rush.
+
+'Who the tevil----'
+
+Then a hurricane of whirling skirts upon the stairs, and on a sudden
+Mrs. Darco, kneeling on the floor, wrestling both hands above her head,
+and shrieking. Mr. Darco darted and shook her as if she had been a
+doormat.
+
+'Get ub! No volly--no volly!'
+
+Mrs. Darco got up and walked soberly upstairs.
+
+'It is klopulus hysteriga,' said Mr. Darco, with a startling calm. 'And
+that is the only way to dreat it But I will not haf my babers mettled.'
+
+Then more dictation, until Paul's mind was crossed by a sudden
+recollection.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' he said, diving his hand into his pocket. 'I
+forgot to give you the change out of that five-pound note.'
+
+'Keep it,' said Darco. 'You will haf to look resbegdable if you stay
+here. You will haf to puy things.'
+
+'I don't like to take it, sir, until I have earned it.'
+
+'Now,' said Darco, 'who do you subbose you are? If you want to stob
+here, you will do as you are dold to do. I am Cheorge Dargo. I do not
+sbeak to beobles dwice.'
+
+'Oh, very well, sir,' said Paul, and went on writing from dictation.
+
+'Now,'said Darco, 'you haf got all the attresses at the foot of the
+ledders. Attress an envelope for each ledder, and leave them all oben
+for my signature. I am going to zleep for half an hour.'
+
+He plunged into an armchair, closed his eyes, and in a minute he was
+snoring regularly and deeply. Paul performed his task, and sat idle for
+a time. At the end of the stipulated half-hour Darco ceased to snore,
+opened his eyes, yawned and stretched as if he longed to fall in pieces,
+and instantly fell to work again. He made Paul read aloud the whole
+afternoon's correspondence, signed each sheet in a hand of clerk-like
+precision, but with a great deal more than clerk-like character in it,
+saw all the letters and envelopes stamped, rang the bell, and sent his
+correspondence to the post.
+
+'Ant now,' he said, 'I haf got to pekin my day's work.' Paul stared a
+little, but made no answer. 'You had petter gome with me,' said Darco.
+'It will help you to learn your business.'
+
+Paul assisted his employer into the big fur coat, assumed his own and
+the shabby cap Pauer had given him, and went out at Darco's heels. A
+closed brougham waited in the street. They entered and were driven away.
+
+It was nearing six o'clock by this time, and as they were driven
+downhill they came into a stratum of cold yellow fog, through which the
+gas-lamps stared with a bleared and drunken look. The vehicle rumbled
+along for some three-quarters of an hour, and pulled up in a shabby
+side-way strewn with cabbage-leaves and all manner of decaying vegetable
+offal Darco rolled out of the brougham, and plunged with a waddling
+swiftness into a narrow, ill-lit passage which smelt of escaping gas.
+Paul followed, and in half a minute found himself for the first time
+within the walls of a theatre and on the stage. The darkened auditorium
+loomed beyond the solitary T-bracket like a great sepulchre. A hundred
+people, more or less, were gathered on the stage.
+
+'Act dwo!' roared Darco at the moment of his entrance. 'Glear for Act
+dwo.' People began to dribble into the outlying darkness. 'Do you hear?'
+he stormed, clapping his hands together. 'Glear for Act dwo. Look here,
+ladies and chentlemen, I am Cheorge Dargo. I do not zay to anypoty
+twice.'
+
+From the moment when he gripped the idea that this was a rehearsal
+the place was a fairyland to Paul. Darco stormed round, correcting
+everybody, acted for everybody, and a little man, who was barricaded
+behind an enormous moustache, and seemed to be second in command, echoed
+the chief's commands plaintively:
+
+'Oh I say, now, why don't you? You got that cross marked down last
+night.'
+
+'You're Binda, are you?' said Darco, addressing one pale and trembling
+young woman who had just tried an entrance. 'Veil, now, look here. I
+don't sbeak to beobles twice. Binda is a light, high-sbirited kirl She
+is all light and laughder and nonsense. See? She gums hob, skib, and
+chump. Like this.'
+
+He waddled furiously to the wing and made the entrance. He was
+ludicrous, he was grotesque, but somehow he conveyed the idea he desired
+to convey. The girl tried again, but failed to satisfy him.
+
+'Vere do you garry your prains?' he asked. 'In your boods?'
+
+The girl began to whimper, and the lieutenant took Darco by the sleeve.
+
+'Don't worry her to-night, governor,' he said. 'She's a good little
+sort, and her mother's dying.'
+
+'Vy the tevil didn't you zay zo? demanded the manager. 'How am I to
+know? Gif her a zovereign,' he whispered, 'and ask her if she vants
+anything--bort-wine or chellies. _You_ know.' Then he turned, roaring:
+'Vere is Miss Lawrence's understudy? Zing, if you please, Miss Clewes.
+I never sbeak to beobles twice. You may go home, Miss Lawrence. Dell
+Villips if you want anything, ant I'll zee to it. Vy the tevil don't
+beobles zay when there are things the madder at home? Now, Miss Clewes.'
+
+The lieutenant was back at Paul's elbow a minute later.
+
+'The governor's a hot un,' he said--'he's a fair hot un when he's at
+work. But for a heart--well, I'm damned if gold's in it with him!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+In a month's time from this Paul's soul sat chuckling all day long. He
+lived with the quaintest set he had ever conceived, and there was no
+page of 'Nickleby' which was fuller of comedy than a day of his own
+life. He met Crummies, and actually heard him wonder how those things
+got into the papers. He met the Infant Phenomenon. With his own hands
+he had helped to adjust the immortal real pump and tubs. He was still in
+the days when there was a farce in an evening's performance to play the
+people in, and a solid five-act melodrama for the public's solid fare,
+and a farce to play the people out.
+
+Darco travelled with his own company, majestically Astrachan-furred
+and splendid, but rarely clean-shaven. Nine days in ten an aggressive
+stubble on cheek and chin seemed to sprout from an inward sense of his
+own glorious import.
+
+'I am Cheorge Dargo,' he said unfailingly to every provincial
+stage-manager he met 'I nefer sbeaks to beobles twice.'
+
+His brutalities of demeanour earned for him the noisy hatred of scores
+of people. His hidden benefactions bought for him the silent blessings
+of some suffering unit in every town. He bullied by instinct in public.
+He blessed the suffering by instinct in private. He was cursed by
+ninety-nine in the hundred, and the odd man adored him. Paul's heart
+fastened to the uncouth man, and he did him burningly eager service.
+
+Paul was in clover, and had sense enough to know it.
+
+'I regognise the zymptoms,' said Darco, when they had been on tour a
+week. 'I am not going to haf my insbirations in the tay-dime any longer.
+All my crate iteas will gome to me now for some dime in the night. You
+haf got to be near me, young Armstrong. You must sday vith me in the
+zame lotchings.'
+
+This meant that Darco paid his whole expenses, and that his salary came
+to him each week intact. He began to save money and to develop at the
+same time an inexpensive dandyism. He took to brown velveteen and to
+patent leather boots. He bought a secondhand watch at a pawnbroker's,
+but disdained a chain. His father had inspired him with a horror of
+jewellery; for once, when he had spent the savings of a month upon a
+cheap scarf-pin, the elder Armstrong had wrathfully asked him what he
+meant by sticking that brass-headed nail in his chest, and had thrown
+the gewgaw into the fire. But the watch for the first week or two was a
+token of established manhood, and it was consulted a full hundred times
+a day, and was corrected by every public clock he passed.
+
+His occupation was no sinecure, for Darco was running half-a-dozen
+companies, and kept up a fire of correspondence with each. He had dramas
+on the anvil, too, and dictated by the hour every day. Often he woke
+Paul in the dead of night, and routed him out of bed, and gave him notes
+of some prodigious idea which had just occurred to him.
+
+Darco had an unfailing formula with his landladies: 'Prek-fasd for
+three, lunge for three, tinner for three; petrooms and zidding-room for
+two,' He worked for three and ate for two.
+
+'I am in many respegs,' he told Paul, 'a most remarkaple man. I am a
+boet, and a creat boet; but I haf no lankwage. My Vrench is Cherman, and
+my Cherman is Vrench, ant my Enklish is Alsatian. My normal demperadure
+is fever heat. I am a toctor; I am a zoldier. I haf peen a creat agdor
+in garagder bards--Alsatian garagder bards--in Vrance and in Chermany.
+I can write a blay, ant I can stage id, ant I can baint the scenery for
+id. I am Cheorge Dargo, ant vere I haf not been it is nod vorth vile to
+co; and vot I do not know apout a theatre it is not vorth vile to learn.
+Sdob vith me, and I will deach you your business.'
+
+The company played a week within five miles of Castle Barfield, and
+Paul snatched an hour for home. There the brown velveteen and the patent
+leathers and the watch made a great impression, and the eight sovereigns
+Paul was able to jingle in his pockets and display to wondering eyes.
+
+'There's danger in the life, lad,' said Armstrong wistfully. 'I know
+it, for I saw a heap of it in my youth. Keep a clean heart, Paul. High
+thinking goes with chaste and sober living. There's nothing blurs faith
+like our own misdeeds.'
+
+Paul was thankful for the dusk which hid his flaming cheeks at this
+moment. His mother had taken away the candle, and the old man had chosen
+the instant's solitude for this one serious word.
+
+'I'm not denying,' said Armstrong, 'that it is a good worldly position
+for a lad of your years, but what's it going to lead to, Paul, lad?
+What's the direction, I'm asking?
+
+'I'm going to be a dramatist,' said Paul.
+
+'A play-actor!' cried the mother, who was back again.
+
+'A play-writer,' Paul corrected. 'I've got the best tutor in the world.'
+
+'Do you mean to tell me,' his mother asked, 'that you think o' making
+that a trade for a lifetime?'
+
+'Why not? asked Pau.
+
+'Why not, indeed!' she cried, with an angry click of her
+knitting-needle. 'Writing a parcel o' rubbidge for fools to speak, and
+other fools to laugh at.'
+
+'It was Shakespeare's trade, Mary,' said Armstrong.
+
+'It's a pretty far cry from our Paul to Shakespeare, I reckon,' said the
+mother with sudden dryness.
+
+'I suppose it is,' said Paul, laughing; 'but there are degrees in every
+calling. Wait a bit I don't mean that you shall be ashamed of me.'
+
+Paul had been away from home for half a year, and absence had altered
+many things. The High Street of the town had grown mean and sordid to
+the eye. Shops which had once been palatial had lost all the glamour
+which childhood had given them and custom had preserved. The dusty,
+untidy shop at home had shrunk to less than half its original
+dimensions. Armstrong seemed changed more than anything or anybody
+else. He looked suddenly small and old and gray. He was not much over
+five-and-sixty, but he had always seemed old to Paul, even from the
+earliest recollections of infancy. But his age had been the age of
+dignity and authority, and now it was age without disguise, white-haired
+and withered, and bowed in uncomplaining patience.
+
+But Paul felt that there was no such change anywhere as in himself. A
+certain complacency had stolen across the horror which had shaken him
+at the first contemplation of his own fall. He had made a step towards
+manhood; he heard the talk of men--not the best, not the wisest, yet
+neither the worst nor the most stupid--and he knew now how lightly they
+valued that which he had once esteemed priceless. He had written in his
+note-book:
+
+'To forgive is godlike. Be as God unto thyself.'
+
+He had made a step towards manhood. He had thought it a hideous,
+irremediable plunge to ruin, and yet somehow he seemed to stand the
+higher for it. The episode was to be hateful for ever in memory. But
+it was to cloud life no longer--only to stand as a sign of warning,
+a danger-signal. Surely the net is spread in vain in the sight of any
+bird. The burned child dreads the fire. He did not as yet reckon that
+man is a moral Salamander, and accommodates himself to all temperatures
+of heat and asceticism. How should a raw lad of less than nineteen think
+in such a fashion? But he knew what he had not known; he had passed
+through the fire, and the smell of burning had left his raiment.
+
+The Midland mother gave him a cold cheek to kiss when he went away, but
+the Scottish father embraced him with a trembling arm.
+
+'Ye'll be remembering Sir Walter's last words to Lockhart,' he said. 'Be
+a good man, my dear.'
+
+Paul pressed his smooth cheek against the soft white whiskers of his
+father's face, and held his right hand hard. There was a lump in his
+throat, and his good-bye had a husk in it. He went back to the society
+of men who had never thought manly chastity a virtue or the unchastity
+of men a crime. He went back armed in steel, and the armour lasted a
+full fortnight in its perfection. Then here and there a rivet came out,
+and by-and-by the whole suit fell to pieces.
+
+'Id is gurious,' said Darco, 'that all the vunniest sdories in the vorlt
+should be vhat they gall imbrober. Look at Arisdophanes; look at Jaucer;
+look at the "Gontes Troladigues"; look at the "Tegameron."'
+
+'Look at Pickwick,' said Paul.
+
+'Vell!' cried Darco, 'look at Bigvig. Bigvig woult haf peen a creat teal
+vunnier if Tickens had lived at the dime of Zmollet.'
+
+'I don't mind drinking out of a jug,' said Paul, 'but I like a clean
+jug. I've read Aristophanes--in translation. It's like drinking wine out
+of a gold cup that has been washed in a sewer.'
+
+'Who says that?' asked Darco.
+
+'I do,' said Paul.
+
+'It is a ferry coot ebicram,' said Darco. 'I vill rememper id. But,
+mindt you, to be squeamish is not to be glean-minded.
+
+If a sdory is vunny, I laugh. Vy not? If a man tells me a sdory that is
+only dirdy, I co someveres else. I am a goot man. For dwendy-three hours
+and fifty-eight minutes in a tay I am as bure-minded as a child; then,
+in the ott dwo minutes somepoty tells me a dirdy sdory. I laugh, and I
+go avay, and I think of my blays and my boedry and my pusiness. It is
+water on a duck's pack.'
+
+'Dirty water,' said Paul.
+
+'There is enough glean water in the tay's rainfall to wash it off,'
+Darco answered. 'Did you efer read "The Orichinal"?
+
+'No,' said Paul.
+
+'The man who wrote it vos so healthy that he nefer hat need to wash
+himself. His skin was too bure to hold dirt.'
+
+'Filthy beggar!' said Paul.
+
+'I make it a baraple,' Darco declared. 'Id is true of the immordal soul.
+I am as bure-minded as a child, and I haf heardt den thousand fillainous
+sdories. Vot does it madder?'
+
+The rivets of Paul's armour rotted, as the rivets of most men's armour
+rot, and he grew to tolerate what had been abominable. And that is the
+way of life, which is a series of declensions from high ideals, and is
+meant to be so because things must be lost before their worth can be
+known. The society in which he lived and moved was as rich as any in the
+world in the kind of narrative he had discussed with Darco. Little by
+little he got to take Darco's view. It is the view of ninety per
+cent, of men of the world. A naturally pure mind never learns to love
+nastiness, but it learns to tolerate it, for the sake of the wit which
+sometimes lives with it.
+
+Darco was a man whom nobody ever saw for an instant under the influence
+of liquor, but then it was impossible to make him drunk. It seemed to
+Paul as if it were just as unlikely for him to become intoxicated by
+drinking as for a decanter to grow tipsy by having liquor poured
+into it. If he ate--as he did--twice as much as the average keen-set
+sportsman, he drank as much as the average hopeless drunkard, and no man
+could have guessed from his speech, or acts, or aspect that he was not
+a total abstainer. Paul, too, began to discover that he had a cast-iron
+pot of a head, and took an infantile pride in the fact; but this kind of
+vanity was not often indulged in, and he had no physical predisposition
+to it.
+
+Darco made money by the handful, and spent it with a lavish ostentation.
+Paul continued his habit of riding about in cabs and dining in hotels.
+It was a bad commercial training, but he was not at the time of life to
+think of that. The days and nights were full. There were both labour
+and enjoyment in them. Every week showed him a new town or city: classic
+Edinburgh, dirty Glasgow--cleaner nowadays--roaring Liverpool, rainy
+Manchester, smoke-clouded Birmingham and Sheffield, granite-built
+Aberdeen, jolly Dublin, with an unaccustomed twang in the whisky, after
+the Scottish progress; Belfast, Cork, Waterford. Everywhere character
+studies in shoals; dialect studies every day and all day long. Paul
+could train his tongue, before the twelve months' tour was over, to the
+speech of Exeter, or Norwich, or Brighton, or Newcastle, or Berwick,
+or Aberdeen, or Cork, or the black North. He set himself to the task
+conscientiously, and with a rich enjoyment. What a Gargantuan table was
+the world!
+
+How lovable, laughable, hateful were the men who sat at it! What a feast
+of feeling was spread daily!
+
+The tour came near to its end, and Darco was arranging a new series
+for half a dozen companies, so that work grew furious. A man might
+have commanded an army or ruled a great department of State with
+less expenditure of energy. There was no advertising or consulting of
+agencies, but everything was done by personal letter. There were reams
+and reams of letters; there were scores and scores of contracts
+with managers, and actors, and actresses, and upholsterers, and
+scene-painters, and printers, and bill-posters, and Darco one organized
+mass of effort at the centre of all the business hurly-burly, doing
+three men's work, and tearing into fibre the nerves of all men who came
+near him. He could be princely with it all in his own way.
+
+'You haf learned your pusiness, young Armstrong,' he said to Paul when
+the rush was over. 'I gan deach anypoty his pusiness if he is not a
+vool. I am Cheorge Dargo. You haf done your work gabidally, and you are
+vorth fife dimes vot I am baying you. But I alvays like the shady site
+of a pargain, and I shall only gif you four dimes.'
+
+So at four times the original sum Paul's salary was fixed, and he began
+to feel himself a man of consequence.
+
+'I am Mr. Darco's private secretary,' he was told to say to people with
+whom he was empowered to deal. 'I am entirely in Mr. Darco's confidence,
+and you may deal with me exactly as if Mr. Darco were here.'
+
+At the beginning of the second year the great provincial cities had
+begun to take advantage of the Public Libraries Act, and here was a new
+joy for Paul. The Free Library was the first place he asked for in any
+big town, and at every spare hour he stuck his nose into a book, and
+kept it there until duty called him away again. Something in 'Gil Bias'
+about poverty in observation struck his fancy, and he cast about in
+his own mind asking where he could observe, not knowing yet that he was
+observing all things. He hit upon the landlady. A man who has fifty-two
+landladies in a year has surely a fertile field. He sorted and
+classified in the light of experience: the honeyed, the acidulated, and
+bibulous-godly (mostly Scottish), the bibulous-ungodly (mostly English),
+the slut with a clean outside to things, the painstaking sloven, the
+peculative (here one majestic sample), the reduced in circumstances,
+the confidential, the reserved, the frisky, the motherly, the
+step-motherly--a most excellent assembly for mirth and pity.
+
+Mrs. Brace came back again. How many years was it since the memory of
+Mrs. Brace had touched the Exile's mind?
+
+Darco did, in the main, his own marketing. He had sent home sausages for
+breakfast, seven in number. Six came to table.
+
+'Vere is my other zausage,' cries Darco. 'There vere zeven. Now there
+are six. Vere is my other zausage?'
+
+'Really you know, sir,' says Mrs. Brace. 'Sausages do shrink so in the
+cooking.'
+
+Paul was under the table with a helpless yelp of pleasure, and Darco
+stormed like a beaten gong.
+
+Come back again, in the brown sultry air, and the solitude, over that
+bridge of years departed, Mrs. Fuller. It was Mrs. Fuller's plan to
+convey a portion of the guests' clean linen from the chest of drawers
+into the hall, and to lay it on the table there pinned up in a neat
+newspaper parcel, and to say, 'If you please, gentlemen, the rest
+of your linning have come home, and, if you please, it's two and
+elevenpence halfpenny.' Oh, the days--the days when a jest like this
+could shake the ribs with mirth!
+
+And Mistress MacAlister, painfully intoxicated at the dinner hour of 2
+p.m., and the uncooked leg of young pork in the larder.
+
+'D'ye thenk ah'm goin' to cuik till ye on the Sabba' Day? Ye'll no
+be findin' th' irreligious sort o' betches that'll do that for ye in
+Dundee, ah'm thenkin'.'
+
+And the little soft-spoken lady from New Orleans, whose husband had been
+a General--in Del Oro--and an old friend of Darco's in his campaigning
+days. And the execution in the house. And Darco signing a cheque for
+twice the amount claimed, and blubbering like a great fat baby, and
+swearing to burn the cheque if she thanked him by another word. Old
+Darco, the nerve-tearer, the inordinate pyramid of vanity, the tender,
+the generous, the loyal. Sweetest fruit in sourest rind! Sleep on,
+old Darco. God makes none gentler in heart, though He makes many more
+beloved.
+
+And how men do, on all hands, unconsciously lay themselves out to
+delight the budding genial satirist! Here is Darco, wealthy and
+prosperous as he has never been before, launching out fearlessly, and
+bearing with him _the_ splendour of the stage--the great Montgomery
+Bassett. Darco, in consultation with the glorious creature, the question
+being in which of his unrivalled and majestic assumptions he shall first
+appear:
+
+'It doesn't matter, dear boy,' says Mr. Montgomery Bassett, in that
+noble voice, a voice rich as the king of all the wines of Burgundy--'it
+doesn't matter the toss up of a blind beggar's farthing. The people
+don't come to see the play, my boy; they come to see me. They'd come to
+see me if I played in Punch and Judy.'
+
+And the late leading man, now dethroned, and put to second business:
+
+'Bassett! Montgomery Bassett! I could act his head off, dear boy. He
+is the rottenest stick that ever stalked upon a stage. He can't get in
+front of that infernal Roman nose, sir. "Now," says Bassett, "I'm going
+to be pathetic;" and the Roman nose says, "I'll see you damned first."
+"And now," says Bassett, "we'll have a bit of comedy." "Oh no, you
+won't," says the nose. You might as well try to act behind a barn-door
+as to act behind that nose. Just fill me out a little tot of Scotch,
+darling laddie. I want to lose the taste of Bassett.'
+
+And the leading lady and the _ingenue_ who hung together like twin
+cherries on one stalk, bathed in soft dews of tenderness, until Bassett
+praised the one and not the other, and the leading lady called
+the ingenue 'Chit' and the ingenue retorted 'Wrinkles!' And the
+reconciliation at the champagne supper which Darco gave when Bassett
+went away, when the tears they shed must have tasted of the wine.
+
+Oh, the days--the days, long years before he set out on his Journey of
+Despair, when mirth had no malice, and tears were tributaries to pity!
+
+'I have vound oudt,' said Darco, one day, 'that our paggage man is
+a pantit He is ropping eferypoty, and I have kiven him a fortnight's
+vages, and the bag to carry. That is my liddle chockular vay to say he
+has got the zack. I haf dele-graphed for a new man, and he will come
+from Lonton by the seven-thirty train. His name is Warr, and you will
+know him by his nose, which is pigger than your fist, and as hot to look
+at as the powels of the Phalarian Pull. It ought to be an acony to garry
+it, but he laughs pehint it in the distance. But I nodice it always
+zeems to make his eyes vater.'
+
+Paul went to meet this phenomenon, and from the train Mr. Warr of the
+Nonconformist printing-office stepped out, carrying the work of art
+before him like an oriflamme.
+
+'Mr. Warr, I believe?' said Paul.
+
+'The same, sir,' said Mr. Warr, with a spinal inclination.
+
+Paul's face was framed in a virginal fringe of brown beard, and he was
+dressed by a London theatrical tailor. Mr. Wan-had no memory of him.
+
+'I am Mr. Darco's private secretary,' said Paul. 'That is the address of
+your lodgings, and when you have taken your traps there Mr. Darco will
+meet you at the theatre.'
+
+'I am at your disposal, sir,' said Mr. Warr.
+
+He gathered up two newspaper parcels, each of which leaked ragged
+hosiery and soiled linen at either end, and pottered along the platform
+at Paul's side, subservient and timid. Paul spurted laughter and
+affected a cough to hide it.
+
+'Here is the refreshment-room, Mr. Warr,' he said. 'May I ask if you
+care at this moment to administer a coating of varnish to the work of
+art?'
+
+'Have I had the pleasure to encounter you before, sir?' asked Mr. Warr,
+peering at him sideways across that astonishing nose, with a brown eye
+bright with moisture. It was like an old cat looking out from the side
+of a fireplace.
+
+'Come in and see,' said Paul.
+
+Mr. Warr went in, and being offered a choice in varnishes, selected cold
+gin.
+
+'My highly superior respects, sir. You either know me, or my fame has
+reached you.' He smiled a propitiatory smile. 'I do not recall you,
+sir.'
+
+'I have varnished the work of art before to-day,' said Paul. 'Do you
+remember Bucklersbury?'
+
+'I should do so,' Mr. Warr returned. 'I drudged there for eight long
+years, and had it not been for Mr. Darco's kindly memories of an old
+associate, I might have drudged there still. But two and fifty shillings
+per week, sir, with freedom and travel thrown in, are highly superior to
+thirty-six, with slavery superadded. But I do not recall your face and
+figure, sir.'
+
+'My name is Armstrong,' said Paul. 'I worked beside you for a week or
+two.'
+
+'The friend of my youth,' said Mr. Warr. 'Permit me to shake hands. Rely
+upon me, Mr. Armstrong, not to be presumptuous. Rely upon me, sir. I
+shall respect bygones. Mr. Darco will tell you who I was and what I was
+when he first knew me. I was first low com., sir, at the Vic, upon my
+soul and honour, Mr. Armstrong. But the work of art, sir, so grew
+and prospered that at last the very gallery guyed me. I went for the
+varnish, Mr. Armstrong, in sheer despair. As God is my highly superior
+judge, sir, I never drank until I had a drunkard's nose. Then I made
+a jest of a deformity, and the joke carried me too far. This infernal
+feature is an unnatural legacy. It is from my maternal grandfather, who
+once owned the town of Guildford. I have heard my mother say that his
+cellars covered a quarter of an acre, and held nothing but port
+and brandy--packed, sir, seven feet deep. To-morrow, in Mr. Darco's
+presence, I sign the pledge till the end of the tour, as per our highly
+superior arrangement. I do not know, sir, whether behind that aspect of
+prosperity there lurks the probability of another fourpennyworth.'
+
+'You mustn't get tipsy to meet Mr. Darco,' said Paul.
+
+'There is no fear of that, sir,' Mr. Warr answered. 'That,' pointing to
+the empty glass, 'is my first to-day, and I as thirsty as I am hungry.'
+
+'Eat, man, eat,' said Paul.
+
+'May I, sir?' asked Mr. Warr.
+
+'Your fill,' said Paul.
+
+There were hard-boiled eggs and cold sausages on the marble-topped
+counter, and Mr. Warr fell to work among them, and mumbled gratitude
+with his mouth full. When he had half cleared the counter, Paul paid for
+the depredations, and Mr. Warr, who knew the town of old, picked up his
+leaking parcels and made off for the address given him.
+
+'Veil,' said Darco when Paul got back to him, 'you haf seen him? Had he
+any package and luckage?' Paul described Mr. Warr's kit. 'You must puy
+for him a jeap, useful bordmandeau, and jarge id to me. I shall sdop it
+out of his wages,' which of course he never did.
+
+Mr. Warr presented himself at Darco's lodging next morning wrapped in
+a perfume of gin and cloves. He laid upon the table a wordy document in
+foolscap with a receipt stamp in one corner, and read it aloud in his
+own breathless chuckle. It set forth that whereas he, the undersigned
+William Treherne Macfarvel Warr, of the one part, late of, et cetera,
+had entered into an engagement with George Darco, Esq., et cetera, et
+cetera, of the other part, to such and such an effect of polysyllabic
+rigmarole, he, the aforesaid and undersigned, did seriously and truly
+covenant with the aforesaid George Darco, Esq., of et cetera, et
+cetera, all over again, not to drink or imbibe or partake of any form of
+alcoholic liquor, whether distilled or fermented, until such time as the
+agreement or engagement between the aforesaid and undersigned on the one
+part, and the aforesaid George Darco, Esq., of the other part, should
+end, cease, and determine. He signed this document with a great
+sprawling flourish, and Darco and Paul having appended their names to
+it also, Mr. Warr wrote the date of the transaction across the receipt
+stamp, and handed the paper to his employer with a solemn bow.
+
+'You haf peen zaying goot-bye to the dear greature,' said Darco; 'I can
+see that.'
+
+'In the words of Othello, sir,' said Mr. Warr: '"I kissed her ere I
+killed her."' He smiled self-consciously, but instantly grew grave
+again. 'You know me, Mr. Darco. You have my highly superior word. I
+never go back on it, sir.'
+
+Mr. Warr kept his word, but he grew insufferably self-righteous, and
+preached total abstinence to everybody, from Darco to the call-boy. He
+atoned for this unconsciously by the longing calculations he made.
+
+'I have consulted the almanac,' he confided to Paul; 'it is two hundred
+and seventy-one days to my next drink.'
+
+After this he offered a figure almost daily: 'Two seventy. A dry
+journey, Mr. Armstrong.''Two fifty, sir, two fifty. The longest lane
+must turn, sir.' Then, after a long spell of yearning: 'Only two hundred
+now, sir. I should like to obliterate two hundred. But a Warr's word is
+sacred.'
+
+'Now,' said Paul one day, 'why don't you take advantage of this sober
+spell to cure yourself of the craving, in place of looking forward to
+the next outburst and counting the days between? Why don't you make up
+your mind to have done with it altogether?
+
+'Sir,' said Mr. Warr with intense solemnity, 'if I thought I had tasted
+my last liquor, I'd cut my throat.'
+
+'If ever I find myself disposed to feel like that,' Paul answered, 'I
+will cut my own.'
+
+'Oh dear no, you won't, sir,' said Mr. Warr. 'If ever you go that way at
+all, you'll slide into it. You will always believe that you could drop
+it at any moment until you find you can't. Then you'll be reconciled,
+like the rest of us.'
+
+Paul had little fear. His temptation, he told himself, did not lie in
+that direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Darco's work fell into routine for a time. The wheels of all his
+affairs went so smoothly that he and his assistant found many easy
+breathing-spaces. But Paul was of a mind just now to scorn delight and
+live laborious days. He confined himself for many hours of each day to
+his bedroom, and on the weekly railway journey with his chief he sat
+for the most part in a brown study, And made frequent entries in a big
+note-book.
+
+'Vat are you doing?' Darco asked one day.
+
+Paul blushed, and answered that he would rather wait a day or two before
+speaking.
+
+'I shall ask your opinion in a week at the outside,' he added.
+
+Darco went to sleep, a thing he seemed able to do whenever the fancy
+took him, and Paul made notes furiously all through the rest of the
+journey. His ideas affected him curiously, for at times his eyes would
+fill and he would blow his nose, and at other times he would chuckle
+richly to himself. He had got what he conceived to be a dramatic notion
+by the tip of the tail, and he was engaged in the manufacture of
+his first drama. In due time the result of his labours in his most
+clerk-like hand was passed over a breakfast-table to Darco, who winced,
+and looked like a shying horse at it.
+
+'Vot is id?' he asked.
+
+'It is a play,' said Paul, blushing and stammering. 'I want to have your
+judgment on it.'
+
+'Dake it away!' cried Darco; 'dake it away. I am wriding blays myselluf,
+ant I will nod look at other beoble's. No. Dake it away!'
+
+Paul stared at him in confusion.
+
+'I do not vant to look at anypoty's blays,' said Darco. 'I haf got
+alreaty all the tramatic iteas there ever haf been in the vorldt--all
+there efer will be. I do not vant notions that are olter than the hills
+brought to me, and then for beobles to say I haf zeen their pieces
+and gopied from them. I do not vant to gopy from anypoty. I am Cheorge
+Dargo.'
+
+'I'll bet,' said Paul rashly, 'that you haven't met this idea yet.'
+
+'My tear poy,' Darco answered, 'if you haf cot a new way of bantling an
+old itea you are ferry lucky. But there are no new iteas, and you may
+take my vort for it. If anypoty asks who told you that, say it was
+Cheorge Dargo.'
+
+'Let me read it to you,' Paul urged. 'It's hardly likely that a
+youngster like myself is going to have the cheek to charge _you_ with
+having stolen your ideas--now, is it?' Darco smoothed a little. 'You
+could tell me if there's anything in it, or if I'm wasting time.'
+
+'Go on,' said Darco, suddenly rising from the table and hurling himself
+into an arm-chair, so that the floor shuddered, and the windows of the
+room danced in their panes.
+
+Paul sipped his tea, opened his manuscript and began to read. He read on
+until a loud snore reached his ears, and then looked up discouraged.
+
+'Vot's the madder?' Darco asked. 'Go on; I am listening.'
+
+Paul went on and Darco snored continuously, but whenever the reader
+looked up at him, he was wide awake and attentive. The landlady came in
+to clear the table and Darco drove her from the room as if she had
+come to steal her own properties. Then he flung himself anew into his
+arm-chair and snored until the reading came to a close. It had lasted
+two hours and a half, and Paul at times had been affected by his own
+humour and pathos. He waited with his eyes on the word 'Curtain 'at the
+bottom of the final page.
+
+'You think that is a blay?' said Darco. 'Vell, it is nod a blay. It is a
+chelly.'
+
+'I don't quite think I know what you mean,' Paul answered, horribly
+crestfallen.
+
+'I say vot I mean,' Darco responded. 'It is a chelly. It is a very goot
+chelly--in' places. You might like it if you took it in a sboon out of
+a storypook, or a folume of boedry; but a blay is a very different
+greation.'
+
+Then he fell to a mortally technical criticism of Paul's work--a
+practical stage-manager's criticism--and enlightened his hearer's mind
+on many things. He said, 'I am Cheorge Dargo, ant now you know,' a
+little oftener than was necessary, but he laid bare all the weaknesses
+of plot and execution--all the improbabilities which Paul supposed
+himself cunningly to have effaced or bidden, and he showed him how
+fatally he had disguised his budding scoundrel in a robe of goodness
+throughout the whole of the first act.
+
+'But it's life!' cried Paul. 'That's what happens in life. You meet a
+man who seems made of honesty; you trust him, and he picks your pocket.'
+
+'Aha!' said Darco; 'but there is always somepoty who knows the druth
+apout him, ant efery memper of your autience must represend that
+somepoty. Now, I'll dell you. I vill make a sgeleton for you. We will
+pild your chelly into a gomedy, ant we will preathe into id the preath
+of life, and it shall valk apout.'
+
+'You'll--you'll work with me?' Paul cried. 'Hurrah!'
+
+Darco rang a peal at the bell, and the landlady, probably thinking the
+house on fire, scurried madly to answer the call.
+
+'Half-bast elefen o'glock,' growled Darco accusingly, 'ant look at the
+preakfast-dable.'
+
+'But you told me, sir----' began the gasping woman.
+
+'Now don't sdant jattering there,' said Darco, 'I am koing to be busy.
+Glear avay!'
+
+'I came to clear away at nine, sir.'
+
+'Glear avay now,' said Darco; 'don't vaste my dime.'
+
+'I'm sure I don't want to waste your time, Mr. Darco,' said the
+landlady, 'but you've given me such a turn, sir, I don't know where I
+am.'
+
+Darco shook the room again by a new plunge into the armchair, and the
+trembling landlady cleared away.
+
+'Now, dake nodes!' he roared, as she left the room.
+
+'I shall be very glad to take notice, sir,' said the landlady.
+
+'Nodes!' shouted Darco. 'Nodes. I am not dalking to you. I am dalking to
+my brivade zegredary.'
+
+Paul seized a pencil, set a pile of paper before him on the table, and
+waited. Darco began to prowl about the room, setting chairs in place
+with great precision, arranging ornaments on the chimney-shelf, and
+settling pictures on the wall with methodical exactness, muttering
+meanwhile, 'Nodes. Dake nodes. I am dalking to my brivade zegredary.
+Nodes. Dake nodes.' Paul was familiar with his ways, and waited
+seriously.
+
+'But this down,' said Darco, pacing and turning suddenly. 'No. Don't but
+that down. I don't vant that' He roamed off again, murmuring: 'No. Don't
+but it down. I don't vant it. I don't vant it. Nodes. Dake nodes.' Then
+with sudden loudness and decision: 'But this down.'
+
+He began to talk. Paul tried to follow him on paper, but the task was
+hopeless. Darco talked with a choking incoherence and at a dreadful
+pace. It was as if a big-bellied bottle were turned upside down, and
+as if the bottle were sentient and strove to empty the whole of its
+contents at once through a narrow neck. At last a meaning began to
+declare itself--the merest intelligible germ of a meaning--but it grew
+and grew until Paul clapped his hands with a cry of triumph at it.
+
+'That is what was wanted.'
+
+'That is a bart of vat is vanted,' said Darco. 'Haf you cot it town?'
+Before Paul could answer he was off again in a new tangle, and fighting
+and tearing his way through it as madly as before. 'Now I am dired,' he
+said. 'I shall haf some lunge, and co to sleep.'
+
+He caught at the bell-pull in passing, gave it a tug, and waddled off to
+his bedroom. The landlady came in with the tray and began to arrange the
+table.
+
+'I don't know what you gentlemen have been doing sir,' she said to Paul,
+'but I'm sure I was afraid there was going to be murder in the house.
+I never heard anybody go on so in my life. I don't know how any young
+gentleman puts up with it.'
+
+'There is very little danger, I assure you,' said Paul. 'Mr. Darco and I
+have been talking business.'
+
+'Well,' returned the landlady, 'I suppose you know how to manage him.
+But I wouldn't be his keeper not for love _or_ money.'
+
+'I am Mr. Darco's private secretary, ma'am,' Paul answered gravely.
+
+'All I can say is,' said the landlady, sighing, 'I'm glad it's
+Saturday.'
+
+It happened that the company took a late train that night for a distant
+town, and Darco paid his bill before leaving for the theatre. He told
+the landlady that he had been extremely comfortable, and that he should
+have great pleasure in recommending her to his friends. When he had
+gone, the landlady told Paul that she was glad the gendeman had his lucy
+intervals.
+
+But the comedy having been once rebegun on Darco's lines, was written to
+an accompaniment of fears and tremblings. It terrified the servants and
+the women-folk at large of every house the collaborateurs lodged in.
+Slaveys, with clasped hands and faces pale beneath smudges of blacklead,
+shook in the hall or on the stairs and landing whilst Darco roared, and
+Paul at the end of a day's work used sometimes to feel as if he had been
+badly beaten about the head. None the less, the work was finished, and
+put into rehearsal.
+
+'Ve vill dry it on the tog,' said Darco, and Paul, who never dared to
+question him as to his meaning, went puzzled for a while.
+
+But Darco rarely said a thing once without repeating it many times, and
+at length Paul understood that the play was to be played 'on the dog,'
+which is theatrical English for the production of a new piece at an
+obscure house in the country. It was tried, but the dog never took to it
+with any great kindness. Darco swore it was the first comedy which had
+been produced since the days of Sheridan. He put it into the repertoire,
+and played it once a week, and whenever it was played it brought a
+guinea to Paul's pocket. It is not every first effort in any work of art
+which does as much as this, however, and Paul had the good sense to see
+that he was fortunate, and looked hopefully to the future. He crept
+into the gallery when the piece was played in any town, and watched his
+neighbours, and listened to their comments on the action and to their
+talk between the acts. This taught him a great deal, for he saw how
+little the popular instinct varies in matters of emotion, and the
+verdict to which he listened was everywhere substantially the same.
+
+There came an especially memorable afternoon when Mr. Warr in a
+four-wheeled fly drove to Darco's lodgings, and announced the sudden
+sickness of the juvenile lead. Darco pounced on Paul as the sick man's
+successor.
+
+'My dear sir,' said Paul, 'I never spoke a word in public in my life. I
+can't do it.'
+
+'That's all right, my poy,' said Darco. 'You've got to do it.'
+
+There was no arguing the matter.
+
+Mr. Warr was despatched in the fly to gather the members of the company.
+Darco thrust into Paul's hands the part he had to study, and went off
+tranquilly to his own room to sleep. Paul slaved for an hour, and seemed
+to have mastered nothing. Darco, having timed himself to sleep for one
+hour precisely, awoke to the minute, and bundled off his victim to the
+theatre. There such members of the company as Mr. Warr had succeeded
+in finding were already collected, and the scenes in which Paul was
+concerned were run through again and again until he began to have some
+idea of what was expected of him, and even some distant knowledge of
+the words. But the whole thing was like a nightmare, and whenever the
+thought of the coming night crossed his mind, it afflicted him with a
+half paralysis. Darco worried him incessantly, bubbling with unhelpful
+enthusiasm, roaring at him, pushing and hauling him hither and thither,
+so that at last he resigned himself to a stupor of despair. The leading
+lady intervened, and she and Darco talked together for a minute.
+
+'Tam it!' he shouted. 'Do you think I want anypoty to deach me? I am
+Cheorge Dargo. I know my drade!'
+
+But the leading lady stuck to him, and at last he went away.
+
+'Now, my dear,' said Miss Belmont to Paul. 'I'll shepherd you. You're
+mostly with me, and so long as we're together you're safe. Darco's a
+darling when you know him, but he's enough to break a beginner's heart.
+Now, dears '--she appealed here to her whole public--'put your hearts
+into it, and help the young gentleman through.'
+
+The rehearsal went on again, and the nightmare feeling wore away a
+little.
+
+'You've got to give me a little bit of a chance here,' said Miss
+Belmont, with her pretty little gloved hand on Paul's shoulder. 'You
+see, it's your forgiveness melts me, and if you forgive me like chucking
+a pennyworth of coppers at a beggar, I shan't be melted. Now, then:
+"Georgy"--say it like that, just a bit throaty and quivery--"I loved you
+so that I'd have laid down my life for you!" Try it like that. That's
+better. Now, give me your eyes, large and mournful, for just five ticks.
+Now turn, three steps up stage, hand to forehead. That's it, but not
+quite so woodeny. Turn. Eyes again. "Georgy!" Now one step down, both
+hands out Pause. That's it "You have broken a truer heart than you will
+easily find again. But I will say no more. Good-bye, Georgy. And for the
+sake of those old dreams which were once so sweet, and now are flown for
+ever, God bless you 'Oh, God bless you and forgive you!" No. Try and get
+it just a little bit more. Poor dear Bannister always cried when he came
+to that. I've seen the tears run down his face many a time. Just go back
+to "Georgy, I loved you sa" Yes, yes, yes, that's it; that's capital.
+Now, that lets me in. "Oh, Richard! Richard! Is it possible that you
+forgive me?" That's your cue for the chair, face in both hands. Now my
+long speech: "Richard," and so on, and so on. "Good-bye, then, dearest,
+truest, tenderest." Just a little shake of the shoulders here and there,
+as if you were sobbing to yourself, don't you see? "Good-bye, good-bye."
+No, don't get up yet. Count six very slowly after "Good-bye" the second
+time. Now rise, turn, arms out "Georgy! Can't you see?" Then down I
+rush, and--curtain. Now, just once more from "Georgy, I loved you so."'
+
+The company clapped hands. Berry, the first comedian, poked Earlsford,
+the leading man, in the waistcoat.
+
+'_You'll_ have to look to your laurels in a year or two.'
+
+'Now,' said Miss Belmont, 'you can't expect to shine tonight. That
+wouldn't be reasonable, would it? But if you won't prevent the rest from
+shining you'll have done your duty nobly. Never you mind Darco: I'll
+keep him out of the house to-night. I'm the only woman in the profession
+who has the length of his foot I'd rather say the breadth of his heart,
+for that's where I always get at him. There'll be an explanation and an
+apology. You'd better read your part. The house won't mind it. Then put
+all you know into that last scene. Chuck the book a minute before the
+real business comes on, as if you'd made up your mind to go for the
+gloves. That'll fetch 'em. Well go over that bit again and again till
+you've got it They'll be just jumping with pleasure in front if you
+surprise 'em with a good touch at the finish, and they'll go away
+thinking how splendidly you'd have done it if you'd had half a chance.
+It's the trot up the avenue, don't you see?
+
+Mr. Warr, who at a gesture had followed Darco from the theatre, appeared
+with a basket in his hand, and was followed by a man who bore a larger
+basket on his shoulder.
+
+'The governor sends his highly superior compliments, ladies and
+gentlemen,' said Mr. Warr, 'and his polite request that you will be
+so very kind as to forget the dinner-hour. Sandwiches, ladies and
+gentlemen. Ham, beef, tongue, pate de foie gras, potted shrimps,
+and cetera. Juice of the grape.' He pointed to the basket, which his
+attendant had already laid upon the stage. 'Fizzy, Pommery-Greno, and
+no less, upon my sacred word of honour!' He groped in his pockets.
+'Champagne-opener, to be carefully returned to bearer. Ah, sir,' he
+added feelingly to Paul, 'when I forswore the varnish, I little thought
+it would rise to this quality. And, ladies and gentlemen,' he continued
+aloud, 'I was to request that you would unite in lending your highly
+superior aid to the neophyte.'
+
+'Our compliments to the governor,' said the leading comedian, who had
+seized the nippers and was already hard at work. 'We bestow on him
+unanimously the order of the golden brick.'
+
+Darco's health was toasted, and the company went to rehearsal again,
+each with a champagne-glass in one hand and a sandwich in the other,
+and worked banqueting. Paul drank a glass of wine, and the coming night
+looked less terrible.
+
+'We've two hours clear,'said Miss Belmont 'Now see if we don't make
+something of you in that time.'
+
+Paul began to take up his cue with spirit, as often as not without the
+book, and to take his proper places without prompting. They worked their
+way on again to the final scene.
+
+'Now, don't be afraid to let go,' said Miss Belmont 'Let us have it as
+if the house was full.'
+
+So Paul threw down his part as arranged, for by this time he knew the
+words of this one scene, and what with the wine and the growing sense of
+freedom, he did pretty well, and when he sat in the arm-chair with his
+face in his hands Miss Belmont no longer gabbled her lines, but spoke
+them with all the feeling and fervour of which she was mistress. And
+when she came to her 'Good-bye, good-bye,' Paul, who at all times was
+easily emotional, was crying softly. He rose with outspread arms and the
+tears on his face and his voice broke. The leading lady rushed at him
+and clipped him round the neck, and Paul clipped the leading lady in a
+perfectly innocent enthusiasm and strained her to his breast.
+
+'You--little--devil!' she whispered, as she drew away from him and
+stabbed him with one wicked flash of her blue eyes. 'I'll forgive you
+this time,' she added half a minute later; 'but it isn't professional.'
+
+'Time for one more run through, ladies and gentlemen,' said the
+stage-manager, and once more the task began.
+
+Miss Belmont's eyes plagued Paul most of the time, now with a look
+of serious affront, now with a sort of mocking challenge. Now, he was
+inclined to try that grip again to see how she would take it, and the
+mocking eyes invited him. Then he dared not so much as think of it, for
+the eyes looked severe offence at him. When the time came he was like a
+wooden doll handling a wooden doll.
+
+'Pooh!' said Miss Belmont, pettishly drawing back from him. 'That won't
+do. Try again.'
+
+They harked back to the beginning of the scene. The others had stolen
+away to their various dressing-rooms. Only the stage-manager was left,
+and he was engaged in talking with the leader of the orchestra, who had
+just come in with a fiddle-case beneath his arm peeping out from his
+shabby paletot The farewell speech came, and it was only breathed. She
+had always dearly, dearly loved him. She had lost him by her pride, her
+coquetry--her silly, silly, heartless coquetry. Her fingers touched him
+on the cheek soft as a snowflake, and lingered there whilst the cooing
+voice went on. Then came the 'Good-bye' again and the answering call.
+She paused and looked, and darted to him, and they clung together, she
+leaning back her head and tangling his eyes in hers.
+
+'You hold me like that,' she breathed, 'until the curtain falls,'
+
+She released herself gradually from his embrace, and drew away. Paul's
+pulses beat to a strange tune, and he was afraid to look at her.
+
+'Ah!' she said, in a voice so commonplace that he jumped to hear
+it, 'the kind creatures have left us half a bottle. One glass, Mr.
+Armstrong, will do you good. You dress with Berry; hell help you with
+your make-up. Don't be nervous. You've got the book to prop you till
+the very end, and there you'll be as right as rain. Here's luck to your
+first appearance.'
+
+Paul took the glass she held out to him, but his hand trembled so that
+he spilled one half its contents on the stage.
+
+'How clumsy!' purred the leading lady. 'Here, take a full glass; there's
+more in the bottle. There; chink glasses. Luck for to-night.'
+
+He drank mechanically, and the stinging wine threw him into a fit of
+coughing. Miss Belmont patted him laughingly on the back, and ran away
+to her own room. Paul took his part from the stage, and tumbled up a
+spiral iron staircase to the loft in which the leading comedian dressed.
+
+'You'd better wear Bannister's togs, if they'll fit you,' said the
+comedian; 'if not, you'll want a dress-suit for the second act.'
+
+The clothes fitted excellently, and Berry saw to the neophyte's make-up,
+painting and powdering him dexterously, and dressing the virginal beard
+and moustache with a dark cosmetic.
+
+'You're funking it,' the comedian said cheerfully. 'That's all right,
+my boy; there never was a man worth his salt who didn't. Give me a new
+part, and I'm as nervous as a cat. But you're in luck in a way, for
+we've all been together so long in this that we could play it in our
+sleep. There isn't one of us that doesn't know the thing inside-out and
+upside-down and backwards.'
+
+Paul crept down the spiral staircase, part in hand, and listened whilst
+the local manager, who rather prided himself on his ability as
+an orator, deplored the serious and sudden indisposition of that
+established favourite, Mr. Bannister, and announced that Mr. Armstrong
+had 'gallantly stepped into the breach,' and would essay the part,
+literally at a moment's notice. Paul would most certainly have
+ungallantly bolted out of the breach had that been possible; but the
+people cheered the local manager cordially, and he, stepping back into
+the gloom of the stage, found Paul shivering there, and tried to hearten
+him.
+
+The night went by in a sort of fog, but Paul read his lines somehow, and
+made his crosses at the right places; and actors are eager to answer to
+any little courtesy from a manager, and Darco's half-dozen of champagne
+was richly paid for by the _elan_ with which everybody played. As to
+the neophyte, they fed and nursed him, and were in at the close of every
+speech of his with a spring and a rattle which made the audience half
+forget the artificiality of the scenes he clouded. Mr. Berry took as
+much whisky-and-water as was good for him, and perhaps a little more,
+and Paul in his nervous anxiety lent a helpful hand towards the emptying
+of the bottle. There was no buzz in the cast-iron head and no cloud in
+the eyes, but he was strung to a strange tension, and he was looking
+forward to that last act and the embrace which crowned it.
+
+'I shan't take the book for this last scene,' he whispered to the
+prompter; 'but watch me, will you?'
+
+The prompter nodded, and Paul passed on to the spot from which he was
+to make his entrance. There was Miss Belmont waiting also. She was in
+evening dress, with shining white arms and shoulders.
+
+'Fit?' she asked laconically, buttoning a glove.
+
+'Middling,' said Paul hoarsely.
+
+She slid away from him through the painted doorway, and he heard her
+voice on the stage. There was a pause, and someone near him whispered:
+
+'Mr. Armstrong, go on; they're waiting.'
+
+He obeyed. The practised woman, cool as a cucumber, gave him his cue a
+second time, and continued to make the pause look rational He plunged
+into the scene, awkward and constrained, but resolute, and in some
+degree master of himself. It was his stage business to be awkward and
+constrained, but he fared not over well, for on the stage it is easy
+to go too close to nature. But at the very last he lost his nervous
+tremors, and in the one scene in which he had been coached so often he
+acquitted himself with credit.
+
+'Can't you see?' he asked in the final line of his piece, and the
+leading lady was in his arms again.
+
+'I can see,' she whispered. 'Kiss me, you silly boy!'
+
+And Paul bent his lips to hers, and kissed her in a way which looked
+theatrically emotional to the house. The roller came down with a thud.
+
+'Stay as you are,' she said; 'there is a call.'
+
+The curtain rose again and fell again, and Paul held the leading lady in
+his arms. The embrace lasted little more than a minute, but it left Paul
+frantically in love--after a fashion.
+
+This was bad in many ways, for the woman was eight years his senior and
+a most heartless coquette, and Paul's infatuation kept him from his own
+thoughts, which were just beginning to be of value to him.
+
+The Dreamer in the mountains grieved wistfully as the old times enacted
+themselves before him. 'Love,' says blackguard Iago, 'is a lust of
+the blood and a permission of the will.' Well, one-and-twenty made his
+dreams even out of such poor material. The westward train boomed past,
+invisible from first to last in the smoke-cloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Miss Belmont, nine-and-twenty, fresh and fair, ignorant-clever (after
+the known feminine fashion), _rusee_ to the finger-tips, with a dragon
+reputation for virtue and a resolute will to keep it, was dangerous to
+the peace of mind of masculine twenty-one. She made Paul her bondslave.
+She intoxicated him with a touch, and sobered him with a face of sudden
+marble. She played the matron and the sister with him, and drove him mad
+between whiles.
+
+Here is one scene out of hundreds, all acted to the Solitary's mind as
+if the past were back again.
+
+Summer was dying. The woods were yet lusty but growing sombre. Level
+beams of parting sunlight flashing through the trees like white-hot
+wire. A Sunday picnic for the company, magnificently provided by Darco,
+had brought Paul and Miss Belmont together. The lady had led the way
+into this solitude with so much tact and skill that Paul took pride
+in his own generalship. They sat on a rustic bench together, and
+immediately before them was an opening in the trees. At a very little
+distance the ground fell suddenly away, and in the valley wound a
+shining river with fold on fold of wooded lands beyond.
+
+Paul was quivering to be nearer to her, but he had no courage to move.
+He looked at her, and her eyes seemed to be dreaming on the distant
+hills. He stole a timid hand towards her very slowly. She turned towards
+him with a soft smile, took the hand in her own, and held it, nestling
+her shoulders into the rustic woodwork and sending her dreamy gaze back
+to the hills again. Once or twice, as if unconsciously, she lifted the
+hand slightly and laid it down again caressingly.
+
+Paul looked at her adoringly. It was like being in heaven, with a touch
+of vertigo.
+
+'Claudia,' said Paul, in a whisper.
+
+'Yes,' she answered. 'Don't speak louder than that. It suits the place
+to whisper. What are you thinking about?'
+
+'You,' said Paul 'I think of nothing else.'
+
+'You silly boy,' said Miss Belmont. 'Why should you think about me?'
+
+'I can't help it I wake up to think of you. I think of you all day. I go
+to sleep thinking of you. I dream about you in the night-time.'
+
+'Oh, you silly Paul!' Her lips smiled, but her eyes dreamed unchangingly
+on the landscape. 'Why do you think of me?'
+
+'Because I love you,' said Paul.
+
+The hand which held his own seemed to encourage him to draw nearer, and
+yet the sign, if there were any sign at all, was so faint that he was
+afraid to obey it She turned her head slowly to look at him. Her round
+soft chin stirred the lace at her shoulder and was half hidden by it,
+and she sat placidly dreaming at his ardent eyes just as she had dreamed
+at the hills.
+
+'I think you do,' she said sweetly; 'but that is all nonsense. You are
+only a boy, and I am a middle-aged woman.'
+
+'Middle-aged!' said Paul, with a fiery two-syllabled laugh of scorn at
+the idea.
+
+'A woman is middle-aged at five-and-twenty. Didn't you know that, Paul?
+She took his hand within her own, and played with it 'What a beautiful
+hand!' she said. 'But you don't take care of it. You treat it
+carelessly. Now, I spend half an hour on my hands every day. Let me show
+you the difference,' and she began to draw off her glove.
+
+'Let me,' said Paul, and she surrendered the hand and he peeled the
+glove from it delicately, and held the white wonder in his own palm. He
+stooped and kissed it in an idiot rapture. 'How happy you make me!' he
+said, looking up with tears in his eyes. 'How I love you!'
+
+She stroked his cheek and his hair with the soft ungloved hand, smiling
+softly at him. He prisoned the hand again, and kissed it again.
+
+'You are a silly boy,' she said; 'a dear, nice, affectionate, silly
+boy!' She released her hand and caressed his cheek again. 'If you were
+older than you are I shouldn't allow you to take these liberties, you
+know.' Then she bent forward sideways a little, and allowed her hand to
+stray beyond his shoulder. 'What makes you fancy that you love an old
+woman like me, Paul?
+
+'It's no fancy,' he said; 'it's life or death with me, Claudia.'
+
+'Poor boy,' said Miss Belmont caressingly, and so moved nearer to him
+and drew his head to her shoulder. 'Am I kind to you, Paul?'
+
+'You are an angel,' said Paul
+
+'Isn't it rather cruel to be kind to you, Paul?'
+
+He buried his hot face in the soft drapery of her shoulder, and gave a
+murmured 'No; oh, no!'
+
+'You think you love me, but it's only a boy's fancy, Paul It will pass
+away. I suppose it's happy whilst it lasts, when I am kind to you. But
+it can't last long. I shall be sorry to part, for I like you very much.'
+
+'We mustn't part,' said Paul huskily. 'Claudia, if you left me I should
+break my heart.'
+
+'No, no,' she answered, drawing him a little nearer. 'Hearts are not so
+easily broken.'
+
+'Easily!' he said. 'Do you think it's easy, Claudia, to live as I do?
+I'm in heaven now, and I'd give my life to be with you for an hour
+like this. But when I'm away from you, when I see you in that beast
+Bannister's arms, and remember the only time I ever kissed you--oh, why
+were you so kind then, and why are you so cold and cruel now?'
+
+'Cold? Cruel?' She stroked his flushed cheek with her soft fingers. 'I
+let you kiss me because I thought what a dear, nice handsome boy you
+were; but I should never have done it if I had thought that you would be
+so silly after it. If you were not so very silly I should like to kiss
+you, because it's a woman's way to kiss the people that she's really
+fond of. But you _are_ so foolish, Paul dear, that I dare not.'
+
+'I won't be foolish,' said Paul, lifting his head, and looking at her.
+
+'Well,' she said, 'will you give me your word of honour to stay here for
+five minutes after I am gone if I give you just one kiss, and not to
+beg me for another, and not to try to get into the same carriage with me
+going home?'
+
+'Don't ask me that,' he besought her.
+
+'Ah, Paul,' she said tenderly, 'don't you think for a moment that I am
+a woman, and that this foolish world would talk about me, even with you,
+if I gave it only the shadow of a chance? Come; I must go now. Promise.'
+
+'The kiss,' said Paul.
+
+'The promise,' said Miss Belmont.
+
+'Yes, I promise. If you asked me to leap over the rocks in front of us
+I'd do it.'
+
+'Give me your hands, then. You won't try to keep me?'
+
+'No, no, no.'
+
+She kissed him warmly and lingeringly on the lips, and darted suddenly
+away. Paul rose to his feet and held out his arms towards her.
+
+'Your promise,' she said. 'Your word of honour as a gentleman.' He
+dropped his hands. 'You shall be paid for that,' she whispered, with a
+face glowing like his own, and she returned to him and kissed him once
+more, holding his hands in hers. Then she left him swiftly and ran down
+the pathway, turning at the bend to waft a last kiss to him, and so was
+gone.
+
+Paul mooned about in a miserable, aching ecstasy for a quarter of
+an hour or so, and then, finding by his watch that the supper-hour
+appointed by Darco was near at hand, he sauntered to the hotel. Miss
+Belmont was there before him, radiant and serene, and looking as
+unkissable as Diana. Paul would have approached her, but a mere motion
+of her fine eyebrows warned him off. He ate little, but he drank a good
+deal of wine, and was gay and moody by turns as he was driven home. And
+far into the night in his own room he walked up and down and made verses
+and raved them in whispers to himself, because Darco slept in the next
+apartment, and was not at all the man to be wisely awakened by the voice
+of Love's young dream. He drew his curtains apart and opened his window
+on the scented night, and took the moon and stars into his confidence,
+and the kisses bit softly down into his heart like fire.
+
+Other scenes there were in which the cunning damsel betrayed Paul into
+the belief that he was an ennobling and lofty influence in her life. She
+was rigid in her choice of topics for conversation, but she ornamented
+her speech now and then with an almost masculine embroidery, and once
+she caught Paul looking at her with a shocked and wounded air.
+
+'I caught your look,' she said, as soon as she could speak to him alone.
+'I know what it meant, and, oh! you made me hate myself. There isn't
+any real harm in it--I mean, it isn't wicked--but it isn't refined or
+womanly, and I'll 'never do it again--never, never, never, for my dear
+little Paul's sake. And Paul shall have a kiss for teaching Claudia a
+lesson. Naughty Claudia!'
+
+And again one day at rehearsal Miss Belmont ordered a brandy-and-soda,
+and Paul's face clouded; and Claudia was penitent, and Paul got more
+kisses for helping naughty Claudia to forget these man-like habits.
+
+The boy's infatuation chimed in with a growing liking for the stage, and
+he volunteered to work there with so much ardour that Darco was newly
+pleased with him, and gave him ample opportunity. So he saw more and
+more of Claudia, and made some progress in his new craft, and the
+foolish game of love went on, until it brought about a crisis.
+
+It was three o'clock on Friday afternoon, and Paul was at the theatre,
+seated in the manager's room, counting and putting into envelopes the
+weekly salaries of the company. He had just consigned the two crispest
+and cleanest of his small stock of five-pound notes and the brightest
+half-sovereign to an envelope bearing the name of Miss Claudia Belmont,
+when the lady herself tapped at the door and entered.
+
+'I wanted to see you alone, Paul dear,' she said, 'and so I came over
+early. I have a piece of news for you. It is very sad news for me, but I
+am afraid you will not think it so.'
+
+'If it grieves you it grieves me,' said Paul; 'you can't have a trouble
+that I don't share.'
+
+'I am going away,' she said, walking to the window and looking out on a
+shabby back-yard which was full of rotting scenery and old stage-lumber
+of all sorts.
+
+'Going away?' Paul repeated.
+
+He was dazed and numbed, as if he had received a blow.
+
+'Yes,' said Claudia. 'Mr. Darco and I have never hit it off very well
+together, and now I am going. I have a very good offer for London, and I
+leave at the end of next week.'
+
+'But I can put things right with Mr. Darco,' said Paul; 'I know I can.'
+
+'No,' she said, with a seeming gentle sadness; 'it's quite impossible.
+My position here has grown intolerable, and, besides that, everything is
+arranged; I have signed for London this afternoon.'
+
+Paul said nothing for the time, for the intelligence crushed him.
+
+'I was afraid that you would be hurt,' she added, after a pause. 'I am
+glad to see that you can take it more easily than I can.'
+
+'Claudia!' said Paul miserably, and sat staring before him with a white
+face.
+
+'I did almost hope,' she said, 'that you would have cared a little.'
+
+'Can't you see?' he answered--' oh, can't you see?'
+
+'I don't want play-acting, Paul,' said Claudia, searching for her
+handkerchief, 'After all we have been to each other I expected a little
+genuine feeling.'
+
+'Claudia,' he burst out, 'you mustn't go; you mustn't leave me. I should
+break my heart without you.'
+
+'I must go, Paul,' said Claudia.
+
+'Then I will go,' cried Paul; 'I can't part from you.'
+
+'How can you go, silly boy?' she answered, suffering him to take her
+hand in his and place his arm about her waist; 'you have nothing to do
+in London; you know nobody there. You have excellent prospects here with
+Darco.'
+
+'Where you go I go,' said the young idiot stanchly. 'I could not live
+apart from you. You're the world to me, Claudia.'
+
+He meant it, every word, and in his contradictory heat and flurry and
+despair he felt as if there were no words at his call which were strong
+enough to express him.
+
+'Oh,' said Claudia, 'it would be sweet to think you cared so much if I
+could only believe you.'
+
+'Believe me? cried Paul. 'Oh, Claudia!'
+
+And then he choked, and could say no more.
+
+But Claudia, whose self-possession was less disturbed than his, heard a
+footstep on the staircase, and whispered an eager warning to him just
+in time. He shot back into his seat, and feigned to be busy with his
+accounts and his orderly little pile of money. Miss Belmont stooped
+at the table, and when Mr. Berry entered he found her initialling the
+pay-sheet. She looked up with a sweet smile, nodded a greeting to him,
+inspected the contents of the envelope, transferred them to her purse,
+and moved to the door; then she turned.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Armstrong, would you mind taking the trouble to run down to
+my lodgings when you have got through with this? I have something very
+particular to ask you, if you don't mind. You know where I'm staying?
+Thank you _so_ much. Good-afternoon.'
+
+She was gone, and everything was gone. Paul made a mechanical effort to
+get through his business.
+
+'I say, young Armstrong,' cried Mr. Berry, 'you're woolgathering; you've
+given me an extra fiver, or has old Darco found out what I'm worth at
+last?'
+
+'My mistake,' said Paul; 'I don't know what I'm doing. I've got a
+beastly headache; I can't think or see.'
+
+'Hair of the dog?' suggested Mr. Berry. 'Hi! Chips, old sonnie'--he was
+bawling down the staircase--' catch 'Oh, butter-fingers! There it is,
+just behind you. Half-a-crown. Just nip across, will you? Two Scotches
+and a split. Take a pull at your own tap while you're there, and look
+slippy. Armstrong, dear boy, you're looking very chalky. Don't overdo
+it, dear boy, whatever you do. In my youth I never did apply hot and
+rebellious liquors to the blood. I take to 'em very kindly now, but I
+never began till thirty. A man's a seasoned cask at thirty.'
+
+Paul let him talk, and was glad enough not to be further noticed. He sat
+with his head in his hands and stared at the table, and tried to
+realize what life would be without Claudia. It looked wholly vacant and
+intolerable.
+
+'Here you are,' said Mr. Berry, releasing the soda-water with a pop, and
+foaming the contents of the bottle into the glasses.
+
+Paul groaned and drank, and by-and-by felt a little better. He would see
+Claudia, would decide on some scheme of action, however desperate, which
+would prevent him from wholly losing sight of her. He would release
+himself from his engagement with Darco. That made him feel like a hound,
+for who had been so good to him as Darco? Who had taken him out of
+hunger and trouble but Darco? He recalled himself characterless,
+despairing; he contrasted his old lot with the present. The change was
+all of Darco's working, and he had grown to love the man, and the man
+on his side had given proofs enough of liking. It looked like a black
+ingratitude to leave him. It was what it looked like--neither more nor
+less. But, then, Claudia, Claudia, Claudia! How could he live without
+Claudia?
+
+He looked at things all round. He had a fixed position, which was so
+excellent that he could not hope to mend it for years to come if he left
+it now. He had a true friend whose friendship he might lose if he left
+him now. He had perhaps an open avenue to fame, and it would close if
+he retired from it, and might never open any more. All these things he
+counted clearly, and reckoned the world well lost for Claudia.
+
+The afternoon work was over, the pay-sheet initialled from top to
+bottom, the accounts made up and balanced, and the change and papers
+locked up in Darco's cash-box. He was free to go to Claudia.
+
+A fly carried him in ten minutes to her door, and she herself admitted
+him.
+
+'Come in, Paul,' she said 'I have been thinking, and I want to speak
+to you very, very seriously.' She led him into her sitting-room.
+'Miss Pounceby is out for the day, so that we shall have time to talk
+together.' Miss Pounceby was the _ingenue_, and she and Claudia lived
+together. 'Sit down, dear, and let me see if I can't bring you to
+reason.'
+
+'You can't persuade me to lose you, Claudia,' said Paul gloomily. 'It
+isn't to be done; it isn't to be thought about.'
+
+'Silly boy!' said Claudia, seating herself beside him, and taking his
+hand in both of hers, 'you know I love you like a sister.'
+
+'I don't want a sister's love,' said Paul. 'I want you to marry me.'
+
+'Why, Paul,' she answered, 'the world would laugh at me. You are only
+just one-and-twenty; I am four years older. That is ages, you know, and
+it is ages on the wrong side.'
+
+'Why should we care about the world?' Paul asked. 'What has the world to
+do with us so long as we can be happy?'
+
+'But I don't love you in that way, Paul,' said Claudia. She leaned
+forward and sideways, and looked gravely in his eyes. 'I love you very
+much, dear Paul--very, very much indeed--and I shall be grieved to lose
+you.'
+
+'I shan't lose you,' said Paul. 'I have made my mind up.'
+
+'You dear boy!' she said, and kissed him; but when he would have
+embraced her she drew back with a warning forefinger upraised. 'You must
+not presume upon my kindness, Paul; but I know that I can trust you.
+I should not have asked you to meet me here if I had not been sure of
+that.'
+
+'Claudia,' cried Paul, rising and pacing about the room, 'have some
+pity. I am not a child; I am a man. I can't bear this. You must be
+everything or you must be nothing.'
+
+'Nothing, Paul?' said Claudia, with grave, accusing eyes and wounded
+face and voice. 'Nothing?'
+
+It was exquisite practice, and she was a hundred times a better actress
+off the boards than on. Paul could appreciate her art at its full value
+in later years, but just now he found earnestness enough for two, and
+would have broken his heart outright if he had known how she was playing
+with him.
+
+'Nothing or all,' he said. 'You treat me like a child, Claudia, but I am
+a man, if I _am_ only a little over one-and-twenty. I have a man's heart
+and a man's blood in my veins. No. Don't come near me yet; I want to be
+my own master.'
+
+'Oh, Paul, dear!' said Claudia; 'you mustn't talk so I never thought
+you felt so deeply. How could I? Must it all be over, Paul? Are they
+all gone, dear--all the happy, peaceful, tranquil hours? Can't I give my
+little brother Paul a simple kiss without making such a tempest?'
+
+'I have had no peaceful, tranquil hours,' cried Paul. 'Oh, Claudia!
+Claudia!'
+
+'Kiss and be friends, Paul,' said Claudia, and Paul was lured back to
+his absurd paradise, and fed on kisses and caresses which were sometimes
+suffered to reach the edge of ardour, and then skilfully chilled.
+
+If feminine nine-and-twenty thinks it worth while to befool masculine
+one-and-twenty, and knows her business as well as Claudia knew it, the
+task is fairly easy. Claudia would not hear of Paul throwing away his
+prospects for so mad a purpose as to follow her to London. She covered
+her pretty ears with her ringed fingers when he talked of it, and
+positively refused to listen. But he must be rewarded for his devotion,
+too, and Claudia wished with all her heart that she could love Paul as
+he loved her. But it would be wicked to marry without a proper feeling
+for a husband, and Paul was her brother, her dear, dear younger brother,
+and to talk of marriage at their ages was such a folly. Wouldn't Paul
+always be her brother? And she laid her soft warm cheek against his
+and kissed his hand. What more could he ask for, silly boy? Wasn't that
+happiness enough for him if he really loved her? If he would be good,
+and promise never, never, never to be foolish again, and frighten
+Claudia with his anger--why _should_ he want to frighten his poor
+Claudia?--they might always love each other, and be, oh, so happy!
+
+The programme thus presented was actually admitted at last to be
+reasonable--for the time being--and Paul was sent away with the
+tenderest farewells and a profound belief--for the time being--that
+Claudia was an angel.
+
+'Whatever you do, dear,' she had said at parting, with her sisterly arms
+about his neck, 'you must not dream of following me to London. I could
+not bear to think that you had imperilled your prospects for my sake.'
+
+'I care for nothing in the world but you,' said Paul.
+
+He played honest coin against counters.
+
+'It is sweet to hear you say so,' said the sisterly Claudia, and she was
+so touched by his devotion that she allowed him to kiss her almost as
+wildly as he wished to do.
+
+An hour or two later Paul was in Darco's presence. He had a hang-dog
+look and felt ashamed, but he was resolute.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,'he said, 'but it has become absolutely
+necessary that I should go to London.'
+
+'Oh!' said Darco, 'is there anythings the madder? Ven do you want to co
+and for how lonk?'
+
+'I must go at the end of next week,' Paul answered, not daring to look
+at him, 'and I must go for good.'
+
+'I am baying you goot vages,' said Darco. 'You vill not get as goot
+vages. Vot is the madder?'
+
+'It is no question of wages, sir,' returned Paul 'I had not thought of
+looking for another situation even, though I shall have to do so, of
+course. But it is absolutely essential that I should be in London. I
+hope you won't think that I am acting ungratefully. I feel as if I
+were, but it will be easy for you to fill my place, and I shall always
+remember how kind and generous you have been to me.'
+
+'Now, loog you here,' said Darco; 'there is somethings the madder. I can
+see it in your vace. You dell me vod it is, and I will but it straight
+for you. I can see that somethings is the madder. I am not a fool. I am
+Cheorge Dargo. Now dell me.'
+
+'I can't explain,' said Paul. 'I can only tell you that I have to go to
+London. I must go.'
+
+'You vait there a liddle bid,' returned Darco. 'I am going to think.'
+He rolled away, and Paul hoped he might think to little purpose, but in
+half an hour he was back again. His eyes snapped, but he was as cold as
+an iceberg. 'Ven do you vant to co?' he asked abruptly.
+
+'As soon as you can spare me,' Paul answered.
+
+'I can sbare you now,' said Darco. 'You are a pick-headed younk itiot,
+ant you can co at once. There is your zalary for next week. Goot-efening
+to you.'
+
+He went out, banging the door behind him, and Paul was left alone
+feeling strangely mean and foolish. It seemed that Darco had come to an
+explanation of his movement, and Paul did not care to think that he had
+found the real reason for it The real reason was a sacred thing whilst
+it was hidden away in his own breast; but, held out to the inspection
+of others, it had a gawky, unfledged sort of look. It lost dignity. The
+dove that cooed in his bosom was a live bird; but once under Darco's
+eyes, and it was a moulted rag--a thing dead and despicable.
+
+He had to face Darco again, and he had little taste for the meeting.
+
+'I haf found oudt vat you are coing to London for,' said Darco. 'You
+are a tarn fool. I haf never seen such a tarn fool in all my tays ant
+years--nefer: nefer since I gave up peing a tarn fool myself. You can
+vork; you haf got prains; you haf cot a gareer in front of you; you are
+one-ant-dwenty. My Cott! you are one-and-dwenty; ant you haf prains, ant
+intustry, ant jances, and you juck them all into the gudder for liddle
+Jarlie Prown.'
+
+'Who is Jarlie Prown?' asked Paul.
+
+'Jarlie Prown is Glautia Pelmond,' said Darco. 'She has kebt her
+initials. C stands for Glautia, just as veil as it stands for Jarlie;
+and P stands both for Prown and Pelmond. She has ruint as many men as
+she has does and vingers. It is no pusiness of mine. Co your vays, you
+silly itiot 'Id is your dime of life to be an itiot, and it is my dime
+of life to laugh at you.'
+
+'I have never heard a man breathe a word till now against Miss Belmont's
+virtue,'cried Paul.
+
+'Firtue?' cried Darco, with a snorting laugh; 'what is firtue? Let me
+dell you this: Your Miss Glautia Pelmond is a volubtuous ice-woman; ant
+that is the most tangerous of all the taughters of the horse-leedge. Ant
+zo, my younk donkey, goot-night ant goot-bye. I am Cheorge Dargo, ant I
+nefer forgive an incratitude.'
+
+This contemptuous parting wounded Paul to the quick, and the strange
+statements about Claudia maddened him. In one respect, at least, Darco,
+in his treatment of women, was chivalry incarnate; he would speak no
+scandal--no, nor listen to it. Paul tossed and tumbled throughout the
+night--a prey to shame and passion and cold doubt. Darco, who had so
+well deserved his gratitude, had accused him of the contrary--the one
+vice of all others which had seemed most repugnant to his nature. Darco
+was right, and Paul was bitten by shame. Then his mind flew to Claudia,
+and he thought how tender she had been that afternoon, how confiding,
+how warm, yet how delicately reticent in conduct Then he flamed and held
+his arms out in the darkness, and swore to be constant to that lovely
+creature, that maddening, dazzling, priceless idol, for ever. Then, like
+a stinging douche to a man in ardent heat of blood, came Darco's saying.
+Darco was a true man, and to think of him as a scandalmonger was mere
+folly. He had quarrelled with Claudia, to be sure, and there was a
+loophole out of which a hopeful doubt might pass. And yet to think so
+was an insult, for Darco was the last man in the world to take a revenge
+so base. But Darco honestly and mistakenly disliked her. That was
+another matter. He was a headstrong man, impetuous, prone to leap
+to conclusions--a very walking heap of favourable and unfavourable
+prejudice. Thus, neither Claudia nor Darco was dethroned. The
+headlong, stammering, vivid man had made a mistake--the fat, unwieldy,
+diamond-hearted creature, all crusted with slag and scoria. Paul could
+have cried to know that Darco dreamed him ungrateful.
+
+'Who knows him as I do?' he thought. 'People laugh at his boasting, and
+run away from his blundering thunder; but the man has the heart of an
+angel.'
+
+He thought of all those underground benefactions in which he himself had
+acted as almoner--the bank-notes to poverty, the Sandeman's port and the
+evaporated turtle-soup to sickness. And the pity of it that such a man
+should so misjudge his Claudia! 'Voluptuous ice-woman.' He could fathom
+the meaning of the phrase, but the wave it would fain have spouted over
+his Claudia left her angel raiment dry. Neither one nor the other of the
+far-parted spumings of the wave touched her. Was that ice when her lips
+were so tenderly laid on his, and their hearts beat close together? Was
+that voluptuous when she held him to a brother's part, and soothed his
+passions into slumber with quiet talk of sweet and sober things? And yet
+in Darco's face, to one who knew him as well as Paul did, there had
+been a mournful look when he had spoken of the most dangerous of all the
+daughters of the horse-leech. Out with the thought--out with it 'trample
+it down! Poor, dear old Darco had been abused. Claudia was spotless as
+the snow, soft as the dawn, sweet, sweet and sweeter than the honey
+or the honeycomb. Thus round the clock of the dark hours ran Paul's
+thoughts, with never a definite hour to strike.
+
+He packed his portmanteaux before leaving his room next morning, and
+even in that simple act he found reproaches. He was carrying away from
+Darco's service a far different kit to that he had brought into it. The
+three or four coarse homemade shirts, and the rough and scanty supply of
+underclothing, were exchanged for linen and silks and woollen stuffs
+of the finest. There were trees for his boots; there was a dandy
+dressing-case; there were many things of the mere existence and use of
+which he had not known two years ago. They were all mementoes of Darco's
+generosity. Surely no man had ever found so open-handed an employer.
+But, for all these reflections, Paul could not surrender Claudia.
+
+He heard the clatter of the breakfast apparatus, and smelt the odours of
+coffee and the savoury meats the soul of which Darco loved; but he dared
+not face the man to whom he felt he had behaved so badly.
+
+'Are you gomink in to pregfast?' Darco trumpeted.
+
+Paul entered and took his seat, and swallowed a cup of coffee; but he
+had no heart to eat.
+
+Darco took his prodigious breakfast in cold gloom, and Paul was as sure
+of his bitter resentment as of his own useless regret for having wounded
+him. It was a trying hour for both of them.
+
+'I am going out now,' said Darco, 'ant you will pe gone before I am pack
+again. Shake hants.' You are going to be very zorry before I see you
+again.'
+
+Paul took the proffered hand, and was nine-tenths inclined to beg
+himself back again into Darco's friendship; but he could not bring
+himself to speak, and in a second or two Darco was in the street, and
+the opportunity had gone. But Paul had his marching-orders, at least,
+and, calling a fly, he saw his luggage set upon it, drove to the
+railway-station, deposited all his belongings in the cloak-room, and
+then started to give Claudia his news. Claudia sent out word that he
+might call again in an hour, and, glancing disconsolately at the window
+of her sitting-room as he walked away, he saw Miss Pounceby giggling
+behind the curtains with her head in a bush of curlpapers. He paced the
+streets until the hour had gone by, and then returned.
+
+'What brings you here so early?' Claudia asked.
+
+She looked ravishingly fresh and pretty to Paul's fancy.
+
+'I told Darco,'Paul answered, 'that I was going to London, and that I
+wanted to leave at the end of next week. He was hurt and angry, and he
+said that, if I had made up my mind about it, I had better go at once.'
+
+'You have behaved very foolishly, Paul,' said Claudia--' very foolishly
+indeed.'
+
+'I did it for your sake, Claudia.'
+
+'For my sake?' said Claudia, raising her eyebrows. 'Why, my dear child,
+how am I supposed to profit by it?' The question took his breath away.
+'I certainly never asked you, or advised you to do anything so very
+silly. You have very likely ruined your whole career. At least, you have
+thrown away such a position as you won't see again for years to come.
+How many people do you think there are in the world who will give you
+the salary Darco gave you, or treat you as he treated you? Oh, you
+needn't look at me in that way, Paul, as if I were responsible. It is
+none of my doing, and I wash my hands of it.'
+
+'But, Claudia,' cried Paul, 'I told you what I was going to do.'
+
+'You certainly told me some nonsense of the kind,' she answered, 'and
+I remember the very words I used. I told you that you must not dream
+of following me to London. I said--I remember my very words
+distinctly--that I could not bear to think of your imperilling your
+prospects.'
+
+'Claudia,' said Paul, 'I thought you would be glad.'
+
+'Why should I be glad to see you making a fool of yourself?' Claudia
+asked disdainfully. 'I thought you had more sense.'
+
+'I shall find work in London,' Paul said rather helplessly. 'I have
+saved more than fifty pounds.'
+
+Possibly the sisterly lady had thought Paul very much poorer than he
+was, and had been in fear that he might in some way become a burden
+to her. The fancy did not touch Paul at the time, but he remembered
+afterwards how swiftly the acerbity of her manner faded.
+
+'Well,' she answered, 'you are sillier than I thought you were; but it's
+of no use crying over spilt milk. You must make the best of things.'
+
+'I shan't care for anything,' said Paul, rallying a little, 'so long as
+I'm not parted from you, Claudia.'
+
+'That's all very well, Paul dear,' returned Claudia, 'but this is a
+practical world, and the people who live in it have got to be practical
+too.' She pinched his cheek as she said this, and laughed at him in
+quite the old delicious way. 'What makes you so absurdly romantic,
+Paul?'
+
+'I don't know,' said Paul, 'that I'm more romantic than other people.
+I'm not the only man who ever fell in love, and I'm sure nobody ever had
+a better excuse than I have.'
+
+'Upon my word!' cried the lady, 'you have a very nice way of saying
+things. Do you know, Paul, if you go on like this, you'll begin to be
+dangerous--in a year or two.'
+
+'I don't belong to the dangerous classes,' Paul answered. 'I'm much
+likelier to suffer myself than to make you suffer.'
+
+'Oh, I'm not talking about me,' said Claudia. 'I'm thinking of the other
+ladies.'
+
+'There are no other ladies,' Paul declared. 'There never will be any
+other ladies. There is only one lady in the whole world for me.'
+
+'Now, seriously, Paul, how long do you think this ridiculous infatuation
+for me is going to last?'
+
+'For ever!' cried Paul boldly. 'For ever and ever. And it isnt an
+infatuation, Claudia. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to fall in love
+with you. Why, you can't walk down the street without half a dozen men
+doing it I know how they turn round to look at you.'
+
+'Oh, you outrageous little flatterer! Wherever did you learn to tell
+such fascinating fibs?'
+
+'They're not fibs, Claudia. You know it as well as I do And I'll tell
+you something. You ask me why I love you. I'm a judge of character.'
+
+'Oh, you dreadful boy! You're not going to judge my character, I hope!'
+
+'I did that long ago,' said Paul, 'and that is why I fell in love with
+you. No,' he broke off, blushing and stammering, 'that is not why I fell
+in love; but that is why I never wanted to climb out again.'
+
+'Well,' said Claudia gaily, 'if you didn't fall in love with my
+character, I'm sure I don't know what else there is.'
+
+'You,' said Paul rapturously. 'Your beauty, Claudia. Don't you ever look
+in the glass?'
+
+'How do you think I am to do my hair?' she asked, laughing. 'But
+seriously, now, Paul, you don't think I'm a beauty? You never told me
+that before.'
+
+'Claudia,' he said, reproaching her, 'I've told you a thousand times.'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Claudia, 'in fun. But now, without nonsense--really? Am I
+pretty?'
+
+'No; you're not pretty, Claudia. Pretty's commonplace. You are lovely. I
+think you are the most beautiful woman in the world.'
+
+'You darling boy! There's a kiss for that. No, no, no, Paul. Only a very
+little one. But I'm not so silly as to believe you, Paul.'
+
+'Claudia,' said Paul--they had reached by this time to the brotherly and
+sisterly attitude, and sat on the couch together, with the sisterly arm
+round Paul's neck--' I was bitterly sorry to leave old Darco, and to let
+him think that I was ungrateful. I know how much he has done for me.'
+
+'I am sure I am not sorry to leave Darco,' she said. 'Grumpy, frumpy,
+stumpy, dumpy old German! I hate him!'
+
+'Don't say that,' said Paul. 'There's as kind a heart under old Darco's
+waistcoat as you'll find in the whole wide world.'
+
+'Never mind Darco, Paul dear. He's not a favourite theme of mine.'
+
+'I wish you hadn't had to leave him, all the same, because then I
+shouldn't have had to leave him. Where shall you live in London,
+Claudia?'
+
+'I'm going to stay with a Mrs. Walpole, a widow lady, a friend of mine
+who takes in a few boarders.'
+
+'Might I stay there, too?
+
+'You? Oh, you improper boy! Of course not.'
+
+'Don't say that, Claudia. I've given up everything only to be near you.
+That's all I ask for, Claudia. It's all I want in the world.'
+
+'My dear Paul,' said Claudia, 'you must not dream of such a thing. It
+would be most unwise. Why, good gracious, child, you'd compromise me
+every hour!'
+
+'Indeed, indeed I wouldn't,' Paul declared. 'I would rather die than do
+it Oh, Claudia! you don't know how I love you. You don't know what it
+will be to me to be with you. You can't guess how miserably unhappy I
+shall be if I am away from you.'
+
+'Very well, Paul,' said Claudia rather frigidly; 'but you must not blame
+me if you lose my friendship by presuming on it. I have no fear of being
+able to take care of my own reputation, and I want you to understand
+that I will do it. And now you may kiss me, and then we will talk
+business.' Paul availed himself of the permission with alacrity until
+Claudia slid gently away. 'That is enough, and more than enough. I won't
+have you making any more declamatory love-scenes, you dreadful boy! No,
+not another. No; not the least little one in the world. You will keep
+to that side of the table and I shall sit on this. Now, reach me my
+writing-desk. I am going to give you a letter of introduction to Walton,
+my new manager. I shall tell him how clever you are, and that you are
+ambitious and want to get to London. You'll get nothing like such a
+salary as Darco gave you--not more than half at the outside. You'll live
+in a poky little garret at the top of a smoky London house, and you'll
+pay thirty shillings a week for board and lodging, and the rest will go
+in washing and 'bus fares. You're making a very bad exchange, I can tell
+you, even if Walton will have anything to say to you.' 'I don't care if
+I'm to be near you, Claudia.'
+
+'But you're not going to enjoy the liberties I allow you here. You must
+understand that, Paul.'
+
+'I shall see you,' said Paul 'I shall be near you.'
+
+'Very well. Now, I'll write the letter. And when it is written you
+will take the very first train to town and give it into Walton's hands
+to-night.'
+
+'But I am going on with you to Cardiff,' Paul cried.
+
+'Indeed,' said Claudia, 'you will do nothing of the kind. I am not so
+absurd as to allow it I am not going to be compromised in that way in
+my last week with the company.' Paul stared at her with a face so
+disconsolate that she laughed; but she put on a tender seriousness
+a moment later. 'Do you call that love, Paul? Ah, no! Few men--very
+few--ever so much as learn the meaning of the word. It is pure
+selfishness. You don't think of poor Claudia. You would let her
+reputation be torn to rags and tatters, but what would that amount to if
+only you could gratify your own wishes?'
+
+'I'll go, Claudia,' cried Paul. 'I'll go to London. Great Heaven 'what a
+selfish, unreasonable beast I am 'Forgive me, Claudia. I did not think.'
+
+'Now you are my own dear Paul again. But you mustn't expect me to find
+_all_ the wisdom.'
+
+She wrote her letter, and Paul watched the white hand skimming over
+the paper. When it was written she read it out to him. It was really
+an excellent letter of introduction, business-like and cordial. Paul
+received it with devout thanksgiving. Then Claudia gave him the address
+of the boarding-house to which she herself was bound, and looked up his
+train in the time-table.
+
+'You must start in half an hour,' she said. 'Oh, Paul dear! Paul! I
+wonder if, in spite of all your protestations, you are so sorry to part
+as I am.'
+
+'Claudia!' said Paul, and ran to the open arms.
+
+He was abjectly in love and abjectly submissive, and Claudia had never
+been so kind. But when at last she told him 'You must go,' he strained
+her in his arms so wildly that he fairly frightened her. Then, terrified
+in his own turn, he released her, and covered her hand with tears and
+kisses of contrition.
+
+'Go,' she said pantingly--'go, at once!'
+
+He looked with remorse at her pale face and questioning eyes, and
+lurched towards the table on which he had laid his hat.
+
+'Paul,' said Claudia, 'it would have been better for you if you had
+never met me.'
+
+'No,'he answered, looking back at her. 'I shall never think that,
+whatever happens.'
+
+'You will think it often,' she said. 'But go now, dear, for pity's
+sake.'
+
+He went out into the street with his wet face, and for a minute or more
+did not know why people stared at him. Then he came to his senses a
+little, and found himself walking away from the station instead of
+towards it He retraced his steps, caught his train, and travelled up to
+London, his pulses beating 'Claudia' all the way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Claudia's introduction served so well that Paul was allowed to show what
+he was made of in rehearsal at the Mirror Theatre, with a prospective
+salary of fifty shillings a week. He had been a personage of late, and
+Darco had delegated to him a good deal of his own authority. He was not
+a personage any longer, and he was not altogether happy in his fall from
+dignity. But Claudia was coming. He and Claudia would be in the same
+house together, and playing at the same theatre. He would see her at
+breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner; he would escort her from the theatre
+and home again. That would be happiness enough to atone for anything.
+
+This prophecy was not quite realized. Claudia chose to breakfast in her
+own room, and she was a woman of many friends, and lunched out and dined
+out so often that Paul hardly saw anything of her. The Sundays would
+have been Elysian days, but ladies and gentlemen of fashionable aspect
+drove to the house in handsome equipages, and spirited Miss Belmont away
+to revels at Richmond and elsewhere in which Paul had no part. He moved
+sadly about the house, in the streets, with no heart for study, or for
+the writing of the new comedy on which his mind had been set so warmly
+only a few weeks before. His old companions were travelling about the
+country, meeting old friends and making new ones, and he wished himself
+back amongst them many a time. He could have written to Claudia, and
+have looked forward to the time when he could have met her again on
+equal terms. They were not equals any longer. Miss Belmont was starred
+in big type, and was leading lady, at a biggish salary; for her first
+real chance had come to her, and she had charmed the town. Paul was a
+walking gentleman with a part of fifty lines, and not a solitary critic
+named his name.
+
+Sometimes, but very rarely, Claudia shone upon him. On fine evenings,
+and on those sparse occasions when she and Paul dined at the same table,
+she would walk to the theatre and accept his escort Then, for a brief
+half-hour, life was worth the living again. But there was one nightly
+hour of torment. His work was over early, for he had nothing to do after
+the opening of the third act of the piece then playing. He would dress
+and wait in his room, and wonder whether that idiot, that dolt and fool
+incomparable, Captain the Honourable John MacMadden, was waiting at the
+stage-door. Captain MacMadden belonged to the Household Brigade, and
+was a bachelor of five-and-thirty. He parted his hair in the middle, and
+wore a moustache and weeping whiskers of the jettiest, shiny black. He
+smiled constantly, to show a set of dazzling white teeth. In his own
+mind Paul loaded this exquisite with savage satire. He was a tailor's
+dummy carrying about a barber's dummy, and the barber's dummy was
+finished with a dentist's advertisement He carried a very thin
+umbrella--the mere ghost of an umbrella--he was gloved and booted with
+the fineness of a lady, and he was always delicately perfumed. He was
+reported to be wealthy, abominably wealthy, and three nights a week or
+more he would present himself at the theatre, and take Miss Belmont out
+to supper. But so discreet was that lady, and so careful of her good
+report, that Captain MacMadden never came without a guardian dragon in
+the person of another young lady of the theatres, who was accompanied by
+a gentleman who was in all points tailored and barbered and gloved and
+booted like Captain MacMadden himself.
+
+Paul would wonder if the splendid warrior were below until he could
+endure himself no longer. Then he would descend and hang about the
+stage-door, to find his enemy or not to find him, as the case might be,
+but in either event to eat his heart in jealousy and impatience. When
+he found him he burned to insult him by asking him what tailor he
+advertised, or by addressing him as the Housemaid's Terror or the
+Nursegirl's Blight. He ground tegmenta of 'Maud' between his teeth as
+he looked at him. 'His essences turn the live air sick,' and 'that oiled
+and curled Assyrian bull, smelling of musk and of insolence.' And it
+happened one night that Captain MacMadden, arriving late, and in a
+mighty hurry and flutter lest he should have missed the lady, tapped
+Paul upon the shoulder, and said:
+
+'My boy, can you tell me if Miss Belmont has left the theatre?'
+
+Paul, who was at that instant bending all the force of his mind upon
+Captain MacMadden, and punching his head in visioned combat, turned
+on him with a passionate 'Damn your impertinence, sir!' which set the
+startled gentleman agape with wonder. At this instant Claudia pushed
+through the swinging door which led from the stage to the corridor, and
+she ran in between the belligerent Paul and the object of his rage.
+
+'What is this?' she asked.
+
+'This gentleman,' said Paul, 'is sadly in want of a lesson in
+good-breeding. I shall be happy to offer him one.'
+
+'Upon my word,' returned Captain MacMadden mildly, 'you're devilish
+peppery. Hadn't the slightest intention to affront anybody, upon my
+word. Nothing further from thoughts. Can't say moah.'
+
+'Mr. Armstrong,' said Claudia, 'I have never seen you display this
+ill-bred brutality before. I had not expected you to show it in my
+presence to my friend.'
+
+Paul felt for the instant that he had been brutal and ill-bred. Claudia
+judged him so, and whatever Claudia said must needs be just But when she
+had swept by him to the waiting brougham and the fashionable escort had
+followed her, he stood in a choking rage, and felt like Cain. A thick
+drizzle was falling, and he swung out into the night, glad of the wet
+coolness in his flaming face, and the wet wind that fanned him. The
+streets were heavily mired and the drizzle grew to a fast downpour.
+He turned up his coat-collar and ploughed along, growing more and more
+resolutely angry, and more and more resolved to fight his case out with
+Claudia. The house in which they lived was dark when he reached it,
+except for a single gas-jet in the hall at which guests bound bedward
+lit their candles. He walked into the dining-room and sat down to wait,
+with nothing but the winking jet on the wall and his own thoughts for
+company. The fire in the grate had died, and its cooling ashes made
+a crisp, faint noise from time to time. The clock on the mantelpiece
+ticked irritatingly, and sounded the quarters at intervals which seemed
+curiously irregular. At times one quarter seemed to follow close on
+another's heels, and the next seemed to lag for hours. Paul was soaked
+to the skin, and had violent fits of shivering, but he would not leave
+his post lest he should miss Claudia.
+
+Cabs rolled by, and every one brought Claudia to his fancy, but scores
+of them passed without pause. One o'clock sounded and no Claudia. Two
+o'clock, and no Claudia. Then the rumble of a lonely hansom, a slippery
+stoppage of a horse's feet, and Claudia's voice crying, 'Two doors
+higher up.' Then a renewed motion, a pause, the scrape of a latchkey at
+the lock, and Paul was on his feet, candlestick in hand.
+
+'Mayn't I come in?' asked the hateful voice of Captain MacMadden. 'On'y
+a moment, upon my word.'
+
+'Certainly not,' Claudia answered curtly. 'Good-night.'
+
+'You'll think of what I asked you?'
+
+'Indeed,' said Claudia, in a voice of scorn, 'I will do nothing of the
+kind. I have never been so insulted in my life, and I shall be obliged
+if you will put an end to your attentions.'
+
+The heart of the involuntary listener glowed within him, but Captain
+MacMadden's drawl broke in and chilled him horribly.
+
+'Well, look here, Claudia, damn it all! Will you marry me? I'll go that
+far, if nothing else will do for you. I will, upon my word.'
+
+'You may ask me that question in a week's time,' said Claudia. 'At
+present I have no more to say to you than just "Good-night."'
+
+The door closed and there was a silence. Claudia laughed quietly
+to herself, and rustled towards the gas-jet. Paul stepped out and
+intercepted her, the unlit candle in his hand, his hair disordered, and
+his face stained with the dye the rain had soaked from his hat His
+teeth were chattering noisily and rapidly, and he and Claudia faced each
+other. Paul lit his candle mechanically, and set it on the hall table,
+below the jet, which blinked with a faint intermittent hum.
+
+'Are you spying upon me, Mr. Armstrong? asked Claudia, with a touch of
+the manner of the stage.
+
+'Not I,' Paul answered bluntly; 'I waited up to speak to you. Are you
+going to marry that grinning nincompoop?'
+
+'You presume,' said Claudia, with yet more of the manner of the stage.
+'You presume abominably. Allow me to pass, sir.'
+
+'The man has offered you a life of shame,' said Paul. 'You mean to
+listen to him after that? She looked at him scornfully and defiantly.
+'Well,' he said, shivering strangely from head to foot, 'you're not the
+woman I took you for. It's good-bye to Claudia.'
+
+He stood aside for her to pass. She lit her candle and swept by him. He
+heard her door close, and the key turn in the lock. He stood shuddering
+in the hall, the chance-held candle dropping grease upon the oil-cloth.
+He gave one big dry sob and mounted to his garret-room. There was no
+sleep for him, and he did not undress. The candle burned down in its
+socket, the light flared up and died, and the nauseous stink of wick and
+tallow filled the room. His mind was strangely vacant, but even in the
+darkness and the silence he found a thousand things in which to take a
+leaden interest: as the swaying of the window-curtains where a slight
+draught caught them; the faintly-seen progress of the rain-drops down
+the window-pane; the wet glints of light where the street gas-lamp dimly
+irradiated the windows and the houses on the opposite side of the way;
+a ticking insect in the wall-paper; sounds of night traffic in the great
+thoroughfare a quarter of a mile off; the squashing tramp of a policeman
+on his rounds; the moaning voices of wind and rain; the very beating of
+his own pulses in his head; the very stupor of his own intelligence.
+
+It was still raining when the dismal dawn crept up, and he was chilled
+to the marrow. He rose stupidly from the chair in which he had passed
+the night, and began to change his dress, stiffly and with difficulty.
+During the greater part of the night he had been sitting in a drooping
+posture, and he found without trouble or interest that he could not
+change it. There was an aching weight upon his loins, but he had no
+interest in that either. He sat in his room all day. The chambermaid
+came to the door and tapped, and receiving no answer, entered. She
+stared to see him sitting at the window and the bed undisturbed, but she
+went away again. Somehow the day crawled on, and as the darkness fell he
+crept downstairs, and crawled, an aching stoop, to the theatre. He
+was an hour before the time, but by hazard he met the manager at the
+stage-door.
+
+'Why, great God, Armstrong! what's the matter?'
+
+'I got wet last night,' Paul answered, in a voice which startled him and
+pained his throat.
+
+He had not spoken a word since he had said good-bye to Claudia.
+
+'You've no right to be out like this,' said the manager brusquely; 'it's
+suicide. You're no good here, you know,' he added, in a kinder voice.
+'Here, you, Collins; call a cab, and help Mr. Armstrong into it.'
+
+'Can you do without me?' Paul asked, in that strange voice.
+
+'Do without you? Yes. I've a man at hand that will swallow your lines
+and biz in half an hour. Get a fire in your bedroom; have a good stiff
+glass of rum as hot as you can drink it. Get somebody to make you
+cayenne pills--cayenne-pepper and bread-crumbs. Take three or four, and
+have 'em hot. Why, man alive, you've got an ague!'
+
+The cab was brought, and Paul was helped into it and driven home. He
+could not lift his hand above his head to pay the fare, and the cabman
+descended grumblingly to take it; but seeing how his fare's feet fumbled
+at the steps, got down a second time to help him to the door. Paul
+walked into the dining-room, hat in hand, and bent The boarders were at
+dessert, and Claudia for once was with them.
+
+'No beggars allowed in this bar,' said one of the professional boarders
+jocularly, thinking the entrance a bit of playful masquerade.
+
+'I'm not very well,'said Paul, with a frog-like roop. 'I've been down to
+the theatre, and Walton has sent me home again. I'm afraid I can't quite
+manage to get upstairs.'
+
+He did not look at Claudia, but he was conscious of her gaze, and he
+knew somehow that there was fright in her eyes.
+
+Two of the boarders engineered him to his room, and one undressed
+him whilst the other ran for rum and cayenne-pepper. They were all
+theatrical folk in the house, and kindly in case of trouble, as their
+tribe is always. Paul was put to bed, and had extra blankets heaped
+upon him, and a fire was lit in the grate. He was dosed with hot
+rum-and-water and the cayenne pills, and was then left, first to grow
+maudlin, and next to fall into a sleep which was full of monstrous
+dreams. At one time he lay in a great cleft between two hills, and
+stones rolled down upon him, causing him dull pain; then the stones
+formed themselves into a fence--a kind of rough arch on which other
+stones battered without ceasing till he was walled in thickly. At
+another time he had to climb up an endless hill, with hot chains about
+his loins and knees.
+
+Somebody came into his room with a candle, and the light awoke him. It
+was one of his fellow-boarders back from the theatre, with news that it
+was nearly midnight. He forced more hot rum on the patient, and sat with
+him until he was sound asleep. The liquor did its work, and he slept
+without dreams until daylight. He strove to rise and dress, but the task
+was beyond him, and there was nothing left but to lie and stare at the
+ceiling, and to say to himself over and over again, without a touch of
+interest or feeling: 'It's good-bye to Claudia.' The landlady came to
+see him, and found him burning and shivering, and complaining of the
+bitter cold. She went away, and came back again with a doctor, who told
+him cheerfully that he was in for rheumatic fever, big or little, as
+sure as a gun.
+
+'But he's young, ma'am,' said the doctor--'he's young, and we shall pull
+him through.'
+
+'Can he be moved?' asked the landlady.
+
+'Moved? No, possibly not for weeks.'
+
+'Have you any money, Mr. Armstrong?' said the landlady, 'or shall I
+write to your friends?'
+
+'There's fifty-one pounds in my dressing-bag,' croaked Paul. 'When
+you've buried me and paid your bill, send the balance to my father.'
+
+'Buried you?' said the doctor. 'You don't suppose you're going to peg
+out, do you?'
+
+'I hope so,' said Paul.
+
+'Oh,' said the doctor, casting a shrewd, good-humoured eye at him,
+'you feel like that, do you? But you've got me to reckon with, and the
+British Pharmacopoeia. When did you eat last?
+
+'Day before yesterday.'
+
+'All right, young man; I'll fettle you, and if you think you're going to
+slip your cable, you're mightily in error.'
+
+'Well,' said Paul, 'it doesn't matter to me one way or the other.'
+
+The time went on, and a day later he was light-headed, and babbled, as
+he learned afterwards, of Claudia. Sometimes he upbraided her savagely,
+and sometimes he made tragic love to her. He had intervals of complete
+sanity, in which the thought of her was like an inward fire; then he had
+a five weeks' spell of madness, and awoke from it free from pain, but a
+mere crate of bones which felt heavier than lead. He remembered some of
+his own delusions clearly, but lost count of whole weeks of time, and
+had yet to learn how long he had lain there. When he awoke he knew that
+somebody was in the room, and made an effort to turn his head. That
+failed, but the somebody heard the faint rustle he made, and the first
+face his eyes looked at was the face of Darco.
+
+'Ah!' said Darco, 'you haf got your prains pack again. You know me, eh?'
+
+Paul tried to nod, but succeeded only in closing his eyes in sign of
+assent.
+
+'I am a bid of a dogtor,' said Darco; 'led me veel your bulse.
+Goot--goot, ant your demberadure is normal. It is now begome your
+business to ead and trink.' He waddled across the room, and came back
+with a tin of jelly and a spoon, and fed the invalid 'That is enough,'
+he said, after the fifth spoonful. 'Liddle and often; that is the came
+to blay.'
+
+Paul was too weak to wonder at anything, or he would have wondered at
+Darco's presence; but Nature was too wise to let him waste his forces on
+any such unprofitable exercise as thinking, and sent him to sleep again.
+When he awoke he was ravenously hungry, and in a day or two he began to
+abuse the nurse who tended him for stinting his victuals. But the nurse
+was a good-humoured old campaigner.
+
+'Why, bless your heart, Mr. Armstrong,' she said, when in an interval
+of contrition Paul apologised, 'it do me good to hear you swear that
+hearty! Most gentlemen does it when they're picking up a bit.'
+
+There was in his mind barely a thought of Claudia; the one fever seemed
+to have burned the other out of him.
+
+'The heart,' said the doctor--'the heart's the thing we're always afraid
+of in rheumatic fever, and the heart's as sound as a nut.'
+
+Paul stretched feebly, and thought he had his jest wholly to himself;
+but the doctor undeceived him.
+
+'It wasn't always so, my young friend.'
+
+Paul blushed like fire.
+
+'Have I been babbling? he asked guiltily.
+
+'A bit,' said the doctor; 'enough to justify those gloomy hopes of
+yours.'
+
+Paul hung his head in a transient shame, and murmured that he was sorry.
+
+'Pooh, pooh!' cried the doctor; 'you're all right now. You can bear to
+hear a little bit of news about the lady?'
+
+'Yes,' said Paul, 'anything.'
+
+'She's married,' said the doctor--'married to the Honourable Captain
+MacMadden, and has left the stage.'
+
+'Did she ever come to see me?' Paul asked.
+
+'No,' said the doctor.
+
+The passion of the youth went to join the calf-love of the boy, and the
+man accomplished looked on them both with a half-humorous wonder. He was
+learning his world, he thought. It would not be easy to fool him in that
+way again.
+
+He sat propped up with pillows in an arm-chair now, and could hold a
+book; but the lubricant at his joints had all been licked up by the
+fever, and it was slow to come back again, so that he had hideous
+twinges when he moved. He had plenty of society now that he was fit for
+it, for the fellow-boarders were idle during the day, and spared time to
+sit and talk with him.
+
+'You recognised old Darco when you saw him, didn't you?' one of them
+asked.
+
+'Oh yes,' said Paul, 'I knew him. What brought him here? I behaved very
+badly toold Darco.'
+
+'Well, to tell you the truth,' said the other, 'he said so. "Ant I nefer
+forgive an incradidude," says he, and proved it by paying the doctor's
+bill.'
+
+Every man in the profession had a more or less plausible imitation of
+old Darco's 'leedle beguliaridies.' He was as well known as the Strand,
+and loved and hated as few men are.
+
+'I treated Darco very badly,' said Paul. 'I can't rest under that sort
+of obligation to him. How much did he pay?'
+
+'You'd better ask the doctor.'
+
+Paul asked the doctor next time he saw him, but elicited nothing.
+
+'But I can't allow it,' Paul cried; 'I can't endure it I behaved
+abominably to Darco; I behaved like a beast and a fool. I'd take his
+scorn and hatred if he thought I was worth either; but I can't accept
+his benefits after the way in which I served him. I left the kindest
+friend I ever had, the man who took me out of the gutter--and that's
+God's truth, doctor; and I left him to follow that----'
+
+He ground his teeth hard on the word he was fain to use.
+
+'Steady!' said the doctor--' steady!'
+
+'That Ignis Fatuus,' groaned Paul. 'Is that mild enough for you?'
+
+The doctor knew everything. There was no further shame in making a clean
+breast of it.
+
+'It's better than what you were going to say,' the doctor answered,
+'whatever it was. I hate vulgarity as the devil hates virtue. It's a
+pretty sex; I know something about it You seem to have lighted upon a
+pretty sample.'
+
+Just at this instant there came a tap at the door, and the voice of the
+maid was heard saying, 'This is the room, sir.' The door opened, and in
+walked Armstrong the elder.
+
+'Dad!' cried Paul
+
+His father held his hand and looked at him.
+
+'I've been sore troubled by your silence, lad,'he said. 'I've had hard
+work to find ye. Ye might have written.'
+
+'I was coming to see you,' said Paul, 'so soon as I could travel. When
+will that be, doctor?'
+
+'In a fortnight's time, perhaps,' the doctor answered--'not much
+earlier.'
+
+The doctor went his way, and the father and son were together.
+
+'You're out of Darco's service, I understand?' said Armstrong. 'He wrote
+kindly about ye, but he said you'd parted. Why did you leave him, Paul?'
+
+Paul was penitent and feeble of body, and his father was his dearest.
+Bit by bit he told his story, or as much of it as he could be told.
+
+'Man,' said Armstrong, 'ye're beginning airly.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+The Dreamer dreamed, and the dream showed the old ramshackle, bankrupt
+printing-office at Castle Barfield again. Paul was back there. The thing
+had happened with a strange in-evitableness. He had gone home and had
+suffered a relapse, and had again recovered, and all his savings
+were expended. There had come a rush of work with which the solitary
+journeyman and his boy could not cope. Paul had gone to their
+assistance, and, the unusual flow of work continuing, he had stayed
+there. He made many applications by letter for other employment, and
+answered many advertisements, but nothing happened to deliver him. His
+heart galled him daily, for he had seen something of the world, and had
+tasted a first-night triumph as part-author of a play, and had mixed on
+equal terms with people who were very far away from his present sphere.
+The county election, which had brought the increase of business, was
+over and done with. Paul succeeded the journeyman, who went his way and
+found employment elsewhere.
+
+In the dim local yokel mind Paul was a failure, and he knew it. He had
+gone away, and his brothers and sisters had magnified his successes,
+and he was back again, a refugee, as it were, from a world which he had
+apparently misused. He was taciturn and gloomy, and, to the fancy of
+those who held themselves his equals and superiors, was disposed to give
+himself airs. Two years with Darco had made him something of an epicure.
+He had grown to hate soiled hands and coarse clothes, and the trivial
+talk of people who only lived for trifles. He suffered doubly,
+therefore, as one who had failed, and as one who took the airs which
+belong only to success. Life was not happy for a while.
+
+The 'stand-by' of Armstrong's poor business was the printing of a
+certain coarse label from stereotype plates, and, when there was nothing
+else to be done, this would be taken in hand for unbroken days together.
+It was an operation as purely mechanical as any in the world, and the
+thoughts of the worker had time and chance to roam anywhere. Paul made
+hundreds of verses. The clean sheet set home to the pins, frisket and
+tympan down, the turn of the drum-handle, the pull of the bar, the
+backward turn of the drum, frisket and tympan up, and the printed sheet
+laid on the ordered pile-day in, day out, ten hours a day, the same
+things done and done again. Hands growing into horn; muscles swelling
+like a blacksmith's. A healthy life enough, with a rough, plain diet,
+and yet a purgatory in its way, with prospect and horizon bound.
+
+In a year or more they widened, for Paul had set up for himself
+something of a study in the old lumber-room, where on a broken
+table, with an upturned box for a chair, and a candle stuck in a
+gingerbeer-bottle, he wrote down the verses he had hammered out during
+the day, and he began stealthily to send these here and there to
+magazine editors, who sometimes sent them back and sometimes printed
+them, but never seemed to dream of payment, until at last one offered
+him two guineas for a long Christmas story in rhyme, and he began to
+see a hope of escape from the treadmill round. He set to work on a
+blank-verse play, and spent the greater part of a year on it, and was
+prepared to find himself enthroned with Shakespeare. He put his drama
+into type, a page at a time, pulling but a single impression of each
+page, and distributing the type jealously before he went to bed, and
+jealously hiding his pages. And when it was all complete, and his brows
+were familiar with the touch of laurel, he sent the great work to a
+London manager, and never heard word of it afterwards, good, bad, or
+indifferent He waited for months in sick hope and sick despair, and then
+wrote asking for a judgment. He waited more months, and no answer came.
+He wrote for the return of his work, humbly, then impatiently, and
+finally with wrathful insult No answer ever came. The muse seemed
+as vile a jade as Claudia. But he had his tattered and stained old
+manuscript, interlined and entangled so that no creature but, himself
+could read it, and he put it all in type once more, and sent his printed
+copy to an eminent firm of publishers, who, after considering the matter
+for six months, offered to take the risk of publication for a hundred
+pounds, on which he burned his manuscript in the cracked office stove,
+and left the printed copy of it in the publishers' hands to do as they
+pleased with it.
+
+He turned to prose and wrote short stories, and sent them broadcast They
+came back, and he sent them out again. He made a list of magazines and a
+list of the stories, and each one went the rounds. One stuck and brought
+proof-sheets, and in due time a ten-pound note. He poured in all the
+rest on the one discerning editor, who had already refused one half of
+them. In a month the man of discernment offered ten shillings per page
+for the lot. Paul accepted, and in another month was back in London,
+resolute to try a new backfall with the world.
+
+He found lodgings far away in the northern district, apprised the one
+discerning editor of his whereabouts, and sat down to wait and work for
+glory. And, oh! how kind again on a sudden seemed the Fates who for four
+years had been so harsh with him. Scarce had he been settled a week when
+there came a letter addressed to Paul Armstrong, Esq., care of Messrs.
+Blank and Blank, reporting that the editor of a certain magazine had
+read with much pleasure a tale from Mr. Armstrong's pen, and would be
+happy to receive from him one of the same length. Paul danced and sang,
+and then plunged into labour, wrote his story, received his proof-sheet
+and his cheque, and with the letter a request that he would submit
+anything he might have in the way of a three-volume story. He was
+assured that it would receive instant attention.
+
+'I'm five-and-twenty,' said Paul, 'and the world is at my feet'
+
+But books are not to be written in a day, though they may be
+commissioned in an instant, and the financial stock was small, seeing
+how big an enterprise was to be started on it, and somehow the story
+would not form. What ghostly wrestling of the spirit with vague shadows
+which would take no shape! what sleepless tossings there were!--what
+fruitless rambles in the darkened streets! what hurried walks to
+Hampstead Heath! and what slow prowlings there amongst the gone! And,
+then, how the Concept came suddenly from nowhere, without a warning,
+without an effort, and stood up serene and strong, and bursting through
+and through with passion as if it had been alive and fully grown for
+years. Then to pen and ink and paper, not yet a weariness to soul and
+flesh! as they were to be in after days, the virgin page an invitation,
+the ink-pot a magic fountain, the very feel of the pen between thumb and
+finger a pleasure. There was no thought in those fresh days of stinting
+labour or of making rules for it--so many hours for work and so many
+hours for recreation, and such and such hours for meals. The book--the
+book was everything. He went to sleep with his people. He awoke to them.
+He lived all day with them. He found them more real than the living.
+Life was one vivid rage of emotion, of laughter, and of tears. His
+own pathetics and his own humours were the sweetest things he had ever
+known, and he cried at the one and laughed at the other more than the
+most sentimental of readers ever laughed and cried over any book that
+was ever written. And it was at this time that he wrote certain verses
+in which he set forth his beliefs in art. The lonely man in his eyrie in
+the Rockies, reviewing the bygone time, murmured what he could recall of
+these:
+
+     '"A land of fire and a land of frost
+     Build!" said the Lord of the Soul;
+     "And lay me an ocean from coast to coast,
+     And let it be awful with many a ghost
+     Of galleons laden with gold, and lost
+     In the smothering surge's roll.
+
+     '"And make me a myriad rounded stars
+     To spangle my firmament,
+     Sweet like Hesper, glad with the balm
+     Of a ceaseless, passionless, changeless calm
+     And hot like Sirius, and red like Mars
+     With a god-like discontent.
+
+     '"And frame in the land of fire," he said,
+     "Frame me a soul like thine:
+     Swift as the snail's soft horn to feel,
+     Yet hard and keen as the tempered steel,
+     And be there a fire in heart and head
+     Demoniac and divine."'
+
+The rest of the words had no duelling in his memory, though he was sure
+they had been made and written; but they were meant to say that all
+labour conceived and executed in a land of fire should be remodelled
+in the land of frost at the risk of being cast away in its passage from
+one to the other. This in plain English meant the union of hot zeal and
+cold diligence, which is a worthy recipe for any worker in any craft It
+served Paul's turn for six prodigious weeks, from the rising of the
+sun until long after the going down of the same. The book was done in a
+quarter of the time he had apportioned to it. For six weeks the forces
+of every waking minute had strained fiercely forward to one purpose, and
+at seven o'clock on an autumn Friday he wrote the words 'The End,'
+and, looking up, saw the sunlight in dazzling strips between the green
+painted laths of the blind, and found that his lamp was pale. He drew
+up the blind and opened the window, and the sweet air bathed his head.
+There was a deep sadness in his heart, and when he arose and by chance
+saw his face in the glass it was the face of a ghost If the halest of
+young men will live in alternations of frost and fire for six weeks on
+end, he must expect to pay for it.
+
+Paul paid dearly in lassitude, and broken sleep, and loss of appetite,
+and afterwards in six weeks of idle waiting in poverty, for there was
+no work or power of thought left in him for the time. He pawned the
+dressing-case old Darco had given him and the dress-suit which he had
+not worn for four years, and he had his meals, such as they were, at a
+cabman's restaurant, and his last penny went, and tobacco famine set in;
+and his landlord, who was a maudlin man with a cultured turn for drink,
+would come in at night to his sitting-room and cry, and say that the
+water-rates were going to cut the supply; and the butcher had said, 'No
+more credit after Saturday.'
+
+And whilst he was thus agreeably engaged on one occasion a knock came to
+the door, and a slattern slavey came in with a plate in her hand, and on
+the plate a wet and flabby oblong something crusted with dirt and slime.
+
+'I can't quite make it out, sir,'said the slavey, 'but I think as this
+is a letter, and it hasn't been opened, sir, and I fancy it's addressed
+to you.'
+
+And within the slimy envelope was a soaked letter, in which the ink had
+so run as to leave it scarcely legible, and being diligently pored upon,
+the letter was found to indicate that the recipient of the story had
+read it with great charm and interest, and was willing to purchase the
+serial rights of the same for the sum of L250, L150 on the author's
+signature to terms, and L100 on the day of the publication of the first
+number.
+
+'It's 'ard for a poor working man to be kep' out of his money like this,
+sir,' the landlord moaned.
+
+'Damn you!' said Paul. 'Listen to this.' He read the letter, and with a
+start reverted to the date: 'September 27th, and this is October 27th!
+I haven't tasted food these three days, or had a pinch of tobacco, and
+this has been waiting for me--this--this--for a whole month! Explain,
+you execrable! or, as sure as the brother of the sun reigns over
+the Heavenly Empire, I will brain you with the poker. Shell out, you
+villain!--shell out, to your last halfpenny! 'Ard for a poor working man
+to be kep' out of his money, is it? Somebody in this infernal house has
+kept me waiting and half starving for a month, whilst I have two hundred
+and fifty pounds to my credit. What are you worth, you hoary inebriate?
+Speak, or die!'
+
+'Seven and eight,' said the landlord, 'and a bogus thrip-penny.'
+
+'Give me five shillings!' cried Paul, snatching up the poker, and the
+landlord pottered out the money.
+
+Away tore Paul to the house round the corner. There were sausages there
+frizzling in a metal-pan with a little row of blue gas-jets below it.
+There was brandy there; there was beer. There was tobacco of a sort,
+and there was an admirable whisky, not the diluted vitriol common to the
+outlying London house before the passing of the Adulteration Act, but
+honest whisky, mellow and old.
+
+Paul, full of meat, and singing to himself behind his pipe, walked
+homeward with a flask of that good liquor in his pocket, and there
+behind was the landlord clinging to the railings at the bottom of the
+area-steps and maundering to a policeman.
+
+'Five shillings--'storted by threats. Tha's the man,' said the landlord.
+
+'Come in, officer, and have a drink,' said Paul, and the officer, after
+an upward and downward look along the street, marched into the house.
+Paul gave him a drink instantly, and whilst the landlord hiccuped
+''Started by threats 'he explained the situation. 'Of course, I made him
+shell out,' said Paul. 'Wouldn't you?
+
+'Well, I'm a guardian of the peace, myself, sir,' said the officer; 'but
+it wouldn't ha' been more than five bob and costs if you'd ha' dressed
+him down. Speaking as a man of uniform, as I may say, I should ha'
+thought that cheap at the money.'
+
+''Storted by threats,' said the landlord.
+
+'Take another,' cried Paul, 'and go to bed. You'll be paid in the
+morning, and you can stick up "To Let" as soon as you like. I'm off to
+the Continent.'
+
+There was still a cab fare in Paul's pocket when he awoke and dressed in
+the morning, and he booked away to the publisher's office and received
+his cheque. Then away to the bank, and away from the bank with
+fifteen ten-pound notes of the Bank of England. Then a breakfast at
+a restaurant, and a pint of champagne to drink his own health in--the
+first wine tasted for nearly five years. Next to 'my uncle's' to redeem
+the dressing-bag and the dress-suit, and next home to stagger the
+landlord with that pile of wealth. Then to pack, singing; to drive back
+to town; to lunch late after the purchase of a suit of reach-me-downs,
+new hat, boots, gloves, and paletot; and last, away to the Continental
+train for a first look at Paris. And all the while it was richly comic
+to himself to feel how he exulted, and to say within doors demurely
+to the shopman, to the waiter, the ticket clerk, the porter: 'I am an
+author, sir, an accepted author, with the first fruits of my first book
+in my pocket I am on the way to Paris and distinction.' The four years
+of lost prospect and horizon looked nothing, less than nothing. But the
+Channel waters were rough, and he was chilled by the solemn gentlemen
+who sat battened down with basins in their laps, turning green and
+yellow in the sickly light; and the railway journey beyond was cold and
+uncomfortable, and Paris in the gray fog of a late October morning
+was less gay than he had expected. What little he knew of the language
+seemed to be recognised by the natives of the land, but what they had to
+say to him was as rapid as the clatter of a running boy's hoop-stick on
+a row of railings, and as intelligible. An English-speaking tout seized
+him, and he was grateful to be decoyed into a dirty hotel on the other
+side of the river, where people understood him more or less when he
+asked a question. Here he entered himself in the guest-book, and under
+the head of 'Profession 'wrote the world 'Literature 'with great pride.
+He ate his cutlets and chipped potatoes at breakfast with an unwonted
+relish, in spite of a revolting table-cloth, encrusted with mustard
+and spilt sauces, and blue with wine-stains, over which salt had been
+spilled to restore the whiteness of the fabric in case it should ever
+have the good chance to be washed. The yard of bread was a novelty. The
+distempered houses opposite--pink and green and blue--were novelties.
+The jalousied windows gave the street a delicious foreign look. The
+little cavalry officer who came clanking in with his baggy trousers
+and his spurs and dangling sword, almost as long as its wearer, was a
+delight. Paul went to the window to look at the middle-aged _bonne_ who
+went by in her Alsatian cap and flying coloured ribbons.
+
+At five-and-twenty a night of wearisome and broken sleep makes small
+difference to the spirits, and when he had washed as well as he could
+by the aid of a cream-jug full of water and a saucer, and a towel
+handkerchief, and without the aid of soap, he dressed, and sallied
+out with the intent to lose himself in Paris. There is nothing so
+exhilarating as the first sight of a foreign city, and Paul wandered on
+and on, past the Palace of Justice and over the bridge, and, turning to
+the left, made along the Rue de Rivoli, passed the far-stretching facade
+of the Louvre, and so went on till he reached the Place de la Concorde.
+There, staring into the basin of one of the fountains, as if he had been
+waiting for Paul to come to him, was Darco, fur-coated and silk-hatted
+as of yore, and looking neither older nor younger by a day than when
+they had parted.
+
+'Darco!' said Paul, with his heart in his mouth. 'How glad I am! You
+dear old Darco!'
+
+Darco stared a moment, for the young man's beard and moustache were
+fully grown, and they disguised him.
+
+'Oh!' he said at last. 'Id is Armstronk. How do you do?' He held out
+his hand somewhat laxly, but Paul took it in both his and wrung it
+fervently.
+
+'I can't tell you how glad I am to see you. I can't tell you how
+bitterly sorry I've been for the brutal way in which I paid you for
+all your kindness. Try and forgive me, old chap. Do now. It wasn't
+ingratitude, Darco, though it looked like it It was a boy's infatuation
+for a woman.'
+
+'I dold you,' said Darco--' I rememper as if it was yesterday. I said:
+"You are a tarn fool, and you will be zorry."'
+
+'I _have_ been sorry this five years or nearly,' said Paul, still
+clinging to his hand. 'Make it up, old chap, and come and have lunch
+somewhere.'
+
+'Zo pe id,' said Darco, stolid as an ox. 'Do you vant a virst-glass
+restaurant, or a second-glass, or vat?'
+
+'The best in Paris!' cried Paul gaily, though he had to blow his nose
+and to cry 'Hem!' to clear his throat, the sight, of old Darco touched
+his heart so.
+
+'Gome along, then,' said Darco, and rolled off sturdily like a barrel on
+barrels in the direction of the Boulevards. 'Rue Gasdilione,' he said,
+playing guide as he walked along. 'Blace Fendome. Golumn Fendome. Rue de
+la Baix. You haf not been in Baris until now?
+
+'I got here this morning,' Paul answered.
+
+'I am here four tays,' said Darco. 'I shall be here four tays longer. I
+am puying a gomedy, ant a blay in five agds.'
+
+'Buying?' said Paul 'I thought the one recognised custom was to steal'
+
+'That's a vool's game,' Darco declared. 'If you sdeal, and if what you
+sdeal is worth sdealing, anypoty can sdeal from you. If you burchase it,
+it is yours, and nopoty can take it away. Honesty is the best policy.
+And, pesides that, I am Cheorge Dargo. I know my way apout.'
+
+Paul could have hugged him for sheer joy at hearing the familiar brag
+again: 'I am Cheorge Dargo.' The old countersign was like music.
+
+'Where are we going?' asked Paul.
+
+'Ve are koink,' said Darco, 'to the Hareng d'Or, where they haf a dry
+champagne, and where they can give you such a preakfast as you cannot
+get in the world. Ant I shall have a Cloria with a zeventy-year-old
+Gogniag in it. Ant the Blat de chour is a Navarin de mouton. I saw that
+as I passed the house two hours aco. I shall haf two boitions, mind
+you.'
+
+'Twenty!' cried Paul.
+
+'No,' said Darco. 'I could not ead twenty.'
+
+They reached the restaurant, one of those jolly little houses which
+are all down now--short as is the time since that in which they
+flourished--where the host knew almost all his guests, and luxury went
+hand in hand with a sort of camaraderie which cannot breathe in our new
+palaces. The chef was a treasure, but as yet no American millionaires
+strove to coax him across the Atlantic. There were no better wines in
+the world, there was no better coffee, and, by way of a wonder, there
+were no better cigars. Darco shook hands with the host, and broke out
+at him in a brash of Alsatian French, which to Paul's ears was like a
+rolling of drums. He caught his own name in the torrent of noise, and
+distinguished the words 'un homme lideraire, cheune, gomme fous foyez,
+mais deja pien tisdangue.' The host bowed, and Paul bowed, and blushed
+a little, and Darco ordered a dejeuner at the host's discretion,
+stipulating only for his own double portion of the Navarin de mouton. So
+there came oysters, with a cobwebbed bottle of old hock in a cradle, and
+an unknown delicate fish with burnt butter, and then the Navarin with
+champagne in an ice-pail, and fruit, and delicate foreign cheeses, and
+coffee which is a dream to the man whose unjaded palate first tries it
+in perfection. The seventy-years-old cognac was there also, and Paul's
+head was humming ever so little before the feast was over.
+
+'And the dopacco?' said Darco lazily--' eh?'
+
+'The true believer smokes it in Paradise,' said Paul; and Darco
+translated the saying to the host, who bowed and smiled.
+
+'How did you know that I was _un homme litteraire?_' asked Paul,
+stumbling at the unaccustomed words.
+
+'I haf seen your name to half a tozen short stories,' said Darco.
+'It was no mere gomparison of names to me. I know your sdyle. It has
+changed. It has changed for the petter, but I know id. You gannot
+deceive me apout a sdyle. I am Cheorge Dargo. I know my way anywhere.'
+They smoked and sipped their coffee in a splendid contentment 'Vat
+prings you to Baris?' Darco asked lazily.
+
+'I sold a book yesterday,' said Paul--'my first I had worked hard; I
+thought I deserved a little holiday--I have got to learn my world. And I
+was beastly hungry the day before yesterday.'
+
+'I have been there,' returned Darco. 'There was an English Duke--he is
+dead now--I did a liddle service in Puda Besth. He vanted to bay me.
+I said "I am Cheorge Dargo. I do not take money excebt in the way of
+business." Ven I was ruint in the United States I game back to England,
+and I hat not one benny. I galled on the Duke. He was at bregfasd. He
+got ub, ant he took me py the shoulders begause he was glad to see me,
+and he said, "My tear Dargo, you are wet"; and I said: "You would be wet
+if you had slept in the rain in St Chames's Bank."'
+
+'You've had hard times, old Darco?'
+
+'I have had a million dollars. I haf had nothings. Once I sdole a loaf.
+I gave the paker ten dollars the week after and dold him vat I had
+done.' He puffed idly and sipped his Gloria. 'I am Cheorge Dargo,' he
+murmured nosily. 'There is nothings I haf not been. There is nothings I
+have not seen.
+
+There is nothings worth doing that I have not done.' He smoked and
+sipped again. 'But I haf not got a liderary sdyle. You haf a liderary
+sdyle. Come again with me to write blays. We will both great fortunes
+make.'
+
+'Shake hands on that,' said Paul vehemently; and Darco shook hands with
+phlegm.
+
+'It is a pargain,' he said. 'See me in five hours' time--Hotel Meurice,
+Rue de Rivoli I will write it for you. And now I must go apout my work.
+I am encaged in ten minutes.'
+
+Paul paid the bill, slipped Darco's address into his waistcoat pocket,
+shook hands with him at the door, and walked away, unconscious, to his
+life's undoing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The voice of the river spoke from the great gorge in accents of
+exultation and despair, and the voice was a part of the primeval
+silence, as it had been from the moment when the Solitary had first
+listened to it. The impalpable, formless brown fog was about him Its
+acrid scent of burning was in his nostrils. And, all the same, he was in
+Paris, in the Rue de Quenailles, where he had lived so long, and where
+he had begun the real troubles of his lifetime.
+
+He saw and heard as if he had been there. The street was lined on either
+side with picturesque houses of an ancient date, the fronts of which
+were parcel-coloured, blue, pink, buff, white, green, all worn into a
+varied grayish harmony by years of exposure to the weather. The cobbled
+roadway was drenched in sunlight, and the green jalousies on the sunny
+side of the street had their own effect on the physiognomy of the
+thoroughfare.
+
+Paul made his way towards his hotel, foreboding nothing, but full
+of youth and high spirits, and somewhat unfairly inspired by wine,
+considering the hour of the day. He was aware of this, and his one
+desire was to reach his own cool and shadowed chamber, and there sleep
+himself back into a sober possession of his faculties. Had any person
+suggested to him that he was tipsy, he would have had a right to repel
+the accusation with scorn. He walked without hesitation or uncertainty;
+he saw quite clearly and thought quite clearly. He had taken a glass
+more champagne than was entirely good for him, and that was all. Had the
+thing happened after dinner, he would simply have put on the brake for
+the rest of the evening, and would have carried his load with ease. As
+it was, nothing but a nap was needed to bring him back to a comfortable
+afternoon sensation. He told himself this as he strolled homeward,
+tasting his cigar in an occasional whiff, but using it mainly as a sort
+of fairy baton with which to beat time to the spirit ditties of no tune
+which filled his harmless mind.
+
+On the side of the street on which he walked he saw the figure of a
+girl, but he took no especial notice of her until he was almost in the
+act of passing. Then he noticed that she was tall and lithe, and that
+she had fine brown eyes and hair. There was nothing in the slightest
+degree compulsive or imperative about her. She was just a girl, and
+there was an end of it He might have passed her a thousand times without
+a second thought, or without a thought at all, but that unhappy extra
+glass of wine was in his blood, and he must needs accost her--more,
+perhaps, to show off his French than for any other reason. His attitude
+towards women had hitherto been chivalrous and shy, and he was aware
+of the overcoming of a difficulty which had frequently given him
+some concern when he flourished off his hat and asked, with a smiling
+insolence:
+
+'Why are you wandering here, I pray?'
+
+The girl looked at him innocently enough, with a gaze quite free from
+anger, coquetry, or embarrassment. It might have been a common thing in
+her experience to be thus accosted by a stranger.
+
+'I am waiting for my sister,'she responded simply.
+
+Did she suppose she would have to wait long? asked Paul. The girl did
+not know. Would she wait under shelter from the sun? She shrugged her
+shoulders, and inclined her head on one shoulder with lifted eyebrows.
+
+'Come along,' said the vacuous idiot 'Let us have a glass of wine
+together.'
+
+The girl smiled sedately, and they went off together.
+
+The extraordinary part of this business was not that a young man who had
+lunched a little too freely should make a fool of himself, but that
+the girl was a good girl, of average breeding, and, as Paul lived to
+convince himself, in spite of all the unhappiness she brought him, had
+never entered upon anything remotely resembling such an adventure as the
+present in all her life. But the readiness of her acquiescence misled
+him, and in the little hard-trodden wjne-garden in which they sipped
+a sugary champagne together, in a trellised alcove like a relic of old
+Vauxhall, he grew amorous, and told her that her eyes were like beryls,
+and that their whites were like porcelain. The lonely man in the brown
+smoke-fog, with the roar of the river in his ears, as unregarded as the
+roar of traffic in a city, recalled it all, and laughed as he threw his
+hands abroad, and fell into a frowning thoughtfulness as he allowed them
+to drop laxly between his knees. The girl had eyes, to be sure--two
+of them--and they were brown, with a touch of beryl in the brown, and,
+conceivably, they had a soul behind them, of one sort or another, but
+she had as much personality as a jelly-fish. She was neither pleased nor
+affronted by the vacuous ass's compliments, and when he praised her hair
+and her complexion, she accepted it as placidly as if she had been a
+waxen lady in a barber's window.
+
+It may have been that this very aloofness of stupidity appealed to him
+as a thing to conquer, but, anyway, he got an arm about her waist,
+and went on praising her with ridiculous emphasis. She allowed him to
+squeeze, and she allowed him to praise, and when he pressed her glass
+upon her she sipped at it with reasonable relish and set it down again.
+When they had been sitting in the arbour for a quarter of an hour or
+so she became loquacious. She said it was a fine day, but that she had
+feared in the morning that it would rain. It was a much finer day
+than the Thursday of last week had been, for then it had rained in the
+afternoon, and since she had been beguiled from home by the treacherous
+pretence of the day without an umbrella she had had a feather spoiled--a
+feather 'que m'a coute cinq francs, m'sieu!' Paul answered that she was
+a little angel, and she told him a parcel of nothings which under fair
+and reasonable conditions would have bored his head off. But it is
+a notable thing that when a youth is beginning to learn a foreign
+language--and Paul was only now entering upon a colloquial familiarity
+with French--he has so much satisfaction in understanding what is said
+to him that a very stupid conversation can interest him. It is not what
+is said which pleases, but the fact that he can follow it, and this,
+with a man who is not easily susceptible of boredom, will last him well
+into the knowledge of a novel tongue. He gathered from the confidences
+exchanged that the young lady lived at home with papa and mamma and her
+sister; that papa was engaged in a big drapery establishment, and came
+home late at night; that mamma was a suburban modiste, and was also away
+from home all day; that her sister and herself did some kind of fancy
+work at home--his French was not complete enough to enable him to
+understand accurately what it was--and that she always made holiday on a
+Thursday afternoon.
+
+Now, Paul had never played the conquering dog until now. He had so far
+been the victim of the sex, and in his own small way had suffered scorn
+and beguilement enough. What with the luncheon and the sticky champagne,
+he began to feel mighty and vainglorious, and he took the airs which
+he supposed to be appropriate to the situation. He praised the lady,
+therefore, with a humorous appreciation of the manner in which she
+accepted flatteries which were passed, so to say, upon a shovel, and
+he tasted with a gratified palate his own fine flavour as a man of the
+world.
+
+That was the silly beginning of it, and the lonely man, recalling it all
+as if he had been back in the midst of it again, asked himself with that
+tired scorn of his own career and nature which had become a part of him,
+if any creature with as much brain as earwax had ever before been so
+easily beckoned to the devil.
+
+'Millions, I suppose,' he said half aloud, in answer to his own mental
+query--'millions.'
+
+And so went on with his dream.
+
+Of the variety of fools there is literally no end, but for the king of
+fool who is predestined to come a cropper in the field of life, and
+to spill other people in his own downfall, there is no rival for the
+Quixote. The man who is over-anxious to pay in the market of morals
+is the man who goes bankrupt You may be a good deal of a scoundrel and
+retain your own esteem and that of the world, but you must not palter
+with your own offences. The world resents a half-virtue, and the
+world is right It is the half-virtue which breeds hypocrisy and
+self-deception, and these are the most despicable of human vices.
+Courage is at the root of manhood, and even the courage which dares
+to do wrong and have done with it is better than the cowardice which
+patches vice with virtue until it can no longer discern the colour of
+either.
+
+Here, for instance, began a liaison of the vulgarest and simplest kind,
+for which a man of any wisdom would have repented in due course whilst
+he would have compounded with it, and would have parted from it, and,
+whilst counting it amongst the sins and follies of his youth, would have
+left it behind him.
+
+Paul and the girl parted innocently that night, but made an appointment
+to meet again on the morrow. He had no stomach for the encounter, but
+he would not break his word, and so, for the sake of a punctilio, he
+wrecked himself. He and Annette went to the Mabille together, and in his
+character of man of the world he made love to her with as fine a relish
+as if he had sat down to bread-and-water after dinner; then, in order
+not to be quite a blackguard, he met her again, and, to save himself
+from his own conscience, again, and at last the compound of vanity,
+weakness, and virtue landed him with her in London, where they set up
+housekeeping together.
+
+For a time this was great, with its twang of Rue Monsieur le Prince and
+Murger and the old Bohemia, and Paul was convinced that he had done a
+noble thing in not deserting the little woman. In a flaccid sort of a
+way she seemed to love him, and in that respect, since his own mind was
+by no means urgent, he was satisfied. He was faithful to the tie, and
+flaunted his own magnanimity.
+
+But his true mistress was his work, and this he loved with an increasing
+ardour. How devotedly he laboured he never knew until long afterwards,
+when what had once been a passion of delight and a necessity of nature
+degenerated into a stale drudgery practised for the sake of mere money.
+But, oh! the sweetness of brain-toil whilst the heart was fresh and
+whilst it still seemed worth while to preach some kind of gospel to
+mankind! To pace the streets and read the faces of people as they
+went by, to weave a thousand stories in a day around the destinies of
+strangers, to sit far into the night fed with rich and glowing fancies,
+to express them with conscious power, to work with living vigour for the
+love of work alone!
+
+These were rich days, and if the domestic intercourse were
+poverty-stricken there was the bachelor intercourse at the clubs to make
+up for it, and even amongst his married friends Annette was an ignorable
+quantity unless he took to waving her like a flag of virtue.
+
+There was Fortescue, a man of medium fame, but of real genius, whose
+delightful home was always open to him. Mrs. Fortescue probably knew all
+about Paul's eccentric menage, but she had been an opera-singer in her
+day, had known a good many open secrets of the kind, and was a woman of
+the world. It was not her business to pry into that kind of secret, and
+she liked the young fellow for many reasons. Considering what a fool
+he was, he had grown to an astonishing charm of manner. The lonely man
+smoking his idle pipe at his tent door in the canon looked back at him
+across such a distance of time and fate that his inspection of the youth
+was almost impersonal. The lad passed for a piece of naive nature,
+and not altogether unjustly. He was eager and ardent, and absurdly
+tender-hearted. He loved all his friends, and he had a crowd of them.
+'Because,' as Balzac says, 'he had known a time when a sou'sworth of
+fried potatoes would have been a luxury,' he threw about his money with
+a lordly liberality. A simple ballad, if sung with any approach to art,
+would bring tears into his eyes. He had all the virtues which came easy
+to him, and, leaving Annette out of question for the moment, he was
+without vices. He had rubbed against the world long enough to have
+grown polished. Nobody questioned his origin or upbringing. His talk was
+brilliant, if it bore no searching analysis, and he had his circle of
+listeners wherever he went. He was a born raconteur, and had proved
+himself in that particular, and his increasing acquaintance with
+the stage and the professors of its trifling art helped him in this
+direction.
+
+Fortescue's house was his one haunt apart from the clubs, the one
+civilized and civilizing home he knew with intimacy, and one night there
+over a cigarette and a whisky-and-soda he turned his jejune philosophy
+of life upon his host.
+
+'I confess,' he said, 'that I have no great opinion of the marriage
+tie. Let there be a loyal association between man and woman, let each
+recognise the responsibilities which belong to it, and where's the fear
+of any priestly ban or the need of any priestly blessing?'
+
+'My dear Armstrong,' said Fortescue, who was very much his senior, and
+a man of a rather starched propriety by nature, 'I would beg you, if you
+permit me, to avoid that theme. The marriage tie to me means a full half
+of the whole sanctity of life. To my mind, the man who derides it is, so
+far as his derision carries him, an ass.'
+
+'Oh,' cried Paul, laughing, 'I like a straight hitter.'
+
+Fortescue shifted the theme with some adroitness, but the talk grew
+stiff and formal. The younger man felt the disapproval of the elder, and
+was ill at ease under it. He rather shied at the house from that
+time forward, and, since an awkwardness of that kind grows easily and
+rapidly, his visits dwindled into rarity, until they ceased by automatic
+process.
+
+It was years before he found a home again.
+
+'Along with many noble and admirable qualities the English people have
+one defect, which is recognised in the satires of every neighbouring
+nation, but is never acknowledged by themselves.' Thus Paul Armstrong
+at his tent door, with the voice of the torrent to emphasize the waste
+silence of his dwelling-place, and the fog to clear his mental vision by
+shutting out from his perception all extraneous things; not thinking in
+these words, or thinking in words at all, but dunking thus: 'Propriety
+is a British legend and a British lie.'
+
+He was back in the old chambers, which were in one of the smaller Inns
+of Court, and was looking at the stale mirth and madness of the bygone
+days. Eight out of ten of the men he remembered had settled down, and
+two of the ten, to make an average, had gone to the devil The two
+were mainly of the better sort--fellows who stuck to an absurd
+responsibility, and let it ruin them. The eight were the good citizens
+who had had the wit to cut responsibility adrift. That was life as he
+knew it, as the boys of his day who studied divinity or medicine, or who
+read for the Bar, or who worked in painting or at journalism or letters,
+all knew it. Clerics, lawyers, painters, authors, men on 'Change, all
+married and settled and respected, admirable citizens by the dozen and
+the score, and where are Lorna, and Clara, and Kate, and Caroline, and
+Fanny? Heaven knows--possibly. The knack of prosperity, surely, is to
+bury your indiscretions.
+
+Oh, bitter, bitter, bitter to have loaded life with such a burden, not
+to have had the courage of a hundred others, and to have left the poor
+responsibility to sink or swim, to have compounded between vice or
+virtue instead of making a clean bargain with one or the other like
+the rest of the world, to have permitted a foolish pity to look like
+a resolute manhood to his eyes, to have throttled his own soul for a
+scruple!
+
+He stages his own soul, and this is what he sees and hears and knows.
+
+Annette is ailing, is seriously ill indeed, and he has taken her into
+the country. He has rented a cottage, in the front of which there is
+a great level common reaching for a mile or two on either side, and
+covered with golden gorse. In front of the cottage and across the common
+is a coppice, all browns and purples and yellows and siennas, and beyond
+that, as seen from the upper windows of the cottage, the land fades into
+misty autumnal blues, to join a whitened horizon which seems to shun
+the meeting, until for very weariness it can postpone it no longer--a
+bell-tent of sky, as it were, with a lifted edge, and beyond the skirts
+of the nearer sky another. Annette is lying in bed, and Paul is looking
+out of the window; he will see the landscape in that way always. He has
+known it under broad summer sunshine, in springtide freshness, under
+winter snow, obscured in sheeting rain, in moonlight, starlight, dawn,
+sunset; but whenever his thoughts go backwards to the place he is
+looking out of the window on that particular aspect of the scene, and
+Annette is behind him, propped in her bed with pillows.
+
+'Paul!' He turns.
+
+'Come to me a moment. Sit down beside me. Take my hand'
+
+He lays down the empty pipe he has been twirling in his fingers, and
+obeys her.
+
+'Paul!'
+
+'Yes, dear.'
+
+'I cannot talk much,' she says, in her pretty foreign accent
+
+It has been the one ambition of her mind during these three or four
+years to speak English like an Englishwoman, and she has very nearly
+succeeded, only there is still a rhythm left which is charming to hear.
+
+'I shall not be with you long.'
+
+'What?'says Paul. 'Nonsense, sweetheart! that's a mere sick fancy. Chase
+it away.'
+
+'It is no fancy,' says Annette--'no fancy at all. I heard the doctor this
+morning. They did not think I could hear, and he was talking with the
+housekeeper. He said he feared the worst. You know what that means,
+Paul.'
+
+What should he say? A man of ardent blood and active brain does not
+live with a jelly-fish for sole home society for a year or two without
+a certain weariness, yet his manhood scorned him for it, and even
+if passion had never been alive at all there was tenderness and the
+camaraderie which comes of close association. He kissed her, and he lied
+in kissing her, but it was not a wicked or an evil lie.
+
+'My dear,' he said, 'this is all fancy. You will be well and strong
+again in a month or two. I have talked to the doctor, and I can assure
+you he has no sort of fear about you. Look here, now. Darco is coming
+down to-morrow, and we shall revise our play. Within a week it shall be
+finished, and then we will have you packed carefully in cotton-wool and
+will carry you back to Paris. Or if you think it will be too cold in
+Paris we will take train to Nice, and pass the winter there.'
+
+'No,' she said, 'I shall spend my winter here, and it will be my last.'
+Her eyebrows had a pathetic lift, and her gaze was on the sky, beyond
+the curtains and the window-panes. 'Paul! Paul dear! Do one thing for
+me.' She turned her frightened appealing brown eyes upon him, and stole
+her hand softly and timidly into his.
+
+'Yes, dear,' he answered. 'Anything that is in my power--anything.'
+
+She had never seemed so human.
+
+'I shall not live to plague you,' said Annette. 'You are strong and
+brave and clever, and you have ambitions, you big boy, and I have been a
+weight about your neck.'
+
+'No, no, no!' he cried.
+
+'Oh yes,' she answered mournfully. 'I know it I have seen it all along.
+But all that will soon be over. Only there is one thing, Paul.'
+
+She stretched out her arms to him, and he bent his head so that she
+might embrace him. He had always fought in his own heart for the fiction
+that he loved her, and sometimes he had won in that difficult conflict;
+now he was sure of it, and he put his arms about her. Was he to lose her
+just as she revealed herself in this sweet way?
+
+'Paul,' she asked him, 'are you sorry that I am going? Shall you
+grieve--a little?'
+
+'You mustn't talk so, dear,' said Paul; 'you break my heart.'
+
+He spoke with a genuine vehemence. He was astonished at the strength of
+his own feeling.
+
+'Then,' she said, 'do this one little thing for me. Whisper. Let me
+whisper. Can you hear me like that?
+
+'Yes, sweetheart, yes. What is it?'
+
+'Make me an honest woman before I die,' said Annette, in a voice that
+barely reached him. 'I was brought up to be a good girl, and I have
+suffered--oh Paul, dear, I have suffered! Promise me.'
+
+Here were depths he had not looked for or suspected, and he thought
+within himself how blind he had been; how much he had misread her;
+how like a doll he had treated her. His whole heart smote him with
+self-scorn, with pity, with remorse.
+
+'You are not dying, dear Annette,' he said; 'you will live, and we shall
+love each other a thousand times better than we have ever done before,
+because this fear of yours has broken the ice between us.'
+
+'No, Paul,' she answered. Her arms fell languidly on the counterpane. 'I
+shall not live, but promise me that. Let me die happy. Tu sais, cheri,
+que ma mere est morte. Je voudrais encontrer ma mere au ciel, comme
+fille honnete, ne c'est pas? Ah! pour l'amour de Dieu, Paul!'
+
+'My darling,' he answered, 'I'll do it! I'll do anything. But don't talk
+nonsense about dying. We shall have many a happy year together yet.'
+
+It was his facile, ardent way to think of himself as brokenhearted if
+he lost her, and he had never seen her in such a mood as this before,
+or anything approaching to it It was no pretence for the moment that he
+loved her. He felt for the first time that their two hearts were near.
+And though he had been loyal to her, and through times good, bad and
+indifferent had brought her of his best, and had done what he could in a
+cool, husbandly sort of way to make her happy, he knew his moral debt
+to her, and was sore about it, and had been sore about it often. It had
+never been in his mind for an instant to evade his burden, even when
+he had felt the weight of it most heavily, and he was willing and even
+eager to offer this small and laggard reparation.
+
+'We have lived here much more than the statutory time,' he said. 'I will
+go and see the district registrar at once, and we will be married at the
+earliest possible minute. That will only be a legal union, dear, but if
+you care for anything further we can be married in a church when you get
+strong enough.'
+
+'Thank you, Paul,' she answered. 'You _are_ good to me.'
+
+'Poor, sweet little woman!' he answered, for now he was touched deeply
+by his own remorse. 'There, you are happy now?
+
+'So happy, Paul! So happy!'
+
+He kissed her and left her there, and loading up his pipe, set out at a
+brisk pace across the common in the direction of the little township
+in which the registrar was to be found. Half an hour's walk brought him
+there, and the functionary was at home. Paul explained his errand and
+its urgency. A special fee obviated publicity, and he paid it. Money
+smoothes all kinds of roads, and in arrangements for marriage it will
+almost abolish time.
+
+Arrangements concluded, the coming bridegroom hastened home, his heart
+warm with resolve and tender with a new-born affection. It was curious,
+he thought, that he should so have misunderstood a woman with whom he
+had been so long in the closest intercourse. That placid, yielding way
+of hers, that habit of mind which he had regarded in his mannish
+fashion as being altogether gelatinous and invertebrate--how ill he had
+construed it all. What a depth of feeling lay concealed beneath it! 'Je
+voudrais encontrer ma mere au ciel, comme fille honnete.' Ah! the poor
+creature, who had yielded too easily to his embraces and his flatteries,
+whom he had led astray with professions of love and admiration which
+had never been real--what amends were too large to repay her? And the
+promised amend seemed little enough, for he had not contemplated life
+away from Annette. His association with her had isolated him in a
+certain degree, but if good women were out of his life, and he missed
+them sometimes rather sadly, good fellows were plentiful, married and
+single, and the length of time for which his liaison had lasted had lent
+it a kind of respectability. Possibly, after all, even if Annette
+had not been about to release him, marriage would have been the best
+solution of a difficulty. He wondered now why he had never thought of it
+earlier. Simply because a trustful girl in her innocence and ignorance
+had permitted herself to repose her whole future on one who might have
+played the scoundrel with her, he had been content to forget his duty.
+Well, he would atone.
+
+The ceremony, when it came, was of the simplest, and had a bald and
+business air about it which was discomfiting to a man who felt that he
+was giving rein to a noble sentiment The registrar, as he pocketed his
+fee, and shook hands in congratulation, assured him it was efficacious.
+It took place, of course, in Annette's bedroom, but it was done with so
+much delicacy that not even the landlady suspected it. The registrar and
+his assistant passed to her mind as medical men called to the bedside of
+the patient.
+
+Paul sat for half an hour after they had gone with Annette's hand
+in his, and then, seeing that she had fallen asleep, softly withdrew
+himself. He strolled to the common, and there, wading through gorse, he
+found the doctor who had attended her from the time of their arrival.
+
+'Well, Mr. Armstrong,' said the medico cheerfully, 'how's the patient?'
+
+'Better, I think,' said Paul. 'But, doctor, tell me--what made you take
+so gloomy a view a week ago? Don't you think she'll mend?'
+
+'Mend, my dear sir? said the doctor. 'Of course she'll mend. You'll have
+her on her feet again in a week or two. She's never been in danger for a
+moment.'
+
+'But didn't you say a week ago----'
+
+'That she _was_ in danger?'
+
+'Yes. That she was in danger.'
+
+'I give you my word, Mr. Armstrong, that the idea never crossed my mind.
+I've never had a touch of anxiety from the first. I'd like you to give
+me a game at chess to-night, if you're not otherwise engaged. I'm just
+going across to have a look at Mrs. Armstrong now. But it's a mere
+matter of form, I assure you. Good morning.'
+
+'Why didn't I ask that question earlier?' said Paul to himself. But he
+scarcely knew as yet in what direction his thoughts were pointing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Paul Armstrong--the real Paul Armstrong who dreamed these dreams of
+memory--sat day by day in his mountain solitude surrounded by the
+smoke-fog which obliterated all but the nearer objects from his view. He
+could faintly distinguish the bluff on the other side of the canon. It
+was like a pale, flat, and barely perceptible stain on grayish-brown
+paper. The mountains were all abolished, but their ghostly voices lived.
+Here and there the slumbering heat upon their flanks would provoke a
+snow-slide, and the long-drawn roar and rumble of it would go rolling
+and echoing apparently in a dozen regions all at once, so that it would
+be impossible to tell from what direction the original sound proceeded.
+Two voices of the solitude were ceaseless--the reverberating roar of the
+river and the chatter of the mountain brook which ran to meet it; but
+in ears long accustomed to them they seemed to weave a silence of their
+own. Twice a day, at least, his sole reminders of the living, pulsing
+outer world went by. Sometimes as the panting train rushed east or west,
+its reminder of the world from which he had parted brought a bitter pang
+with it.
+
+He found but little occupation for his hands, and, apart from his
+memories, little for his mind. He read and reread his father's dying
+words until he knew them by rote, and could read them with shut eyes as
+he lay in his blanket in the wakeful hours of night. He would not admit
+to himself that he had a real belief in their message, and yet it was
+always with him in a fainter or a stronger fashion, and it made a part
+of life.
+
+It was not merely that he had little to do and little to think about
+apart from his memories, that he dwelt so constantly upon them. He
+thought often that there was something within himself which led him
+gently yet inexorably to these contemplations, and it happened more than
+once that while he was in the very act of thinking thus his dream came
+upon him as if a spell had been cast upon his mind Forgotten emotions
+lived again; facial expressions of people he had known; tones of
+voices not remarkable, and not much remarked, came back. It was like
+a curiously vivid dream; but it had all happened, and he was living it
+over again.
+
+Bring what intellectual denial he would to the problem his father's
+letter had set before his mind, his nerves at least accepted it, and
+he had a settled consciousness that he was not alone. He fought against
+this as a mere superstitious folly. He was often angry with himself for
+ever stooping to discuss it in his own mind. He had long ago resolved
+that the man dies as the beast dies, and that there is no more a bourne
+of new life for the one than for the other. And now all manner of doubts
+began to pester him. No more for the one than for the other? Why not for
+all? Why not one unending cycle of experience? Why not the passing of
+one growing intelligence through every form of life? The Eastern sages
+dreamed so.
+
+He would sit there at his tent door buried deep in his thoughts, and
+often, without his being able to trace the faintest sign of any action
+in his own mental mechanism, his father's voice would wake him with an
+interjection of, 'Exactly!' or 'That's the point, Paul!' There was no
+sound, and yet the voice was there, and the old familiar Ayrshire accent
+seemed to mark it as strongly as it had done in his father's lifetime.
+It was all very well to deride it as a mere delusion; it was easy to
+put it on one side for a moment and to stand over it in an intelligent
+superiority, tracking it to its sources in some obscure action of nerve
+and brain. But howsoever often he might eject belief from his mind, it
+came back with a clinging, gentle insistence which would not be denied;
+and little by little, though sorely against his will, he began to have a
+sence of it. A verse of 'In Memoriam 'was often in his mind:
+
+     'How pure in heart, and sound in head,
+     With what divine affections bold,
+     Should be the man whose heart would hold
+     An hour's communion with the dead.'
+
+He began at last to think that his own unfitness for such a communion
+helped him to his disbelief in its possibility, and from that hour the
+feeling of his father's nearness weighed more and more upon him.
+
+Sitting at his tent door hour on hour, feeling himself, with the passage
+of each day, more completely isolated from the world, he seemed forced
+to a clear appreciation of the inner truth of his own retrospect; and,
+so far as any exercise of will was concerned, he found it a record of
+folly and weakness. There had been hours of high good fortune there, but
+they had been barely of his seeking, and of his own actual making not at
+all. Folly and weakness had stung him many and many a time, but it was
+not until he had reached the last recorded effort of memory that they
+had laid a weight upon his shoulders. Now he knew that he had tied a
+millstone about his neck; that he had permanently denied to himself all
+the sweet and vivifying influences of the higher social life. Sometimes
+detached from him, as though it watched from outside and waited for
+further confessions from his memory, and sometimes seeming an intimate
+part of him, as if it were a constituent of that desolate ache which
+filled and possessed his soul, there was always there the image of the
+gray old father, wistful, sagacious, patient--no ghost, but veritably
+a haunting thought, and at last, in spite of all contention, as real to
+him as his own hands. Yet when he went back to his dreams his obsession
+vanished, and it was only in the pauses of his vision that it returned.
+
+Here were the dreams again.
+
+He had come to understand quite clearly that a trick had been played
+upon him, but he was not constantly unhappy in its contemplation, or
+altogether resentful at it Annette improved in health with a startling
+rapidity, and he had the doctor's assurance on that head.
+
+'Mrs. Armstrong is as sound as a roach, sir, and will probably outlive
+either of us.'
+
+'That is well,' said Paul, and he set himself to bear the burden he had
+gathered.
+
+At this time he found the greatest happiness in work, and alike with
+Darco, and for his own hand, he laboured unceasingly. Money came
+fast--more money than he had ever hoped for. Fame came also, in a
+fashion, and many genial societies were open to him. But Annette was not
+a person to be defrauded of anything she conceived to be a right, and
+he soon found upon how slight a thread domestic content might hang.
+Invitations to Mr. Paul Armstrong were plentiful, but of Mrs. Paul
+Armstrong his world had no knowledge outside the jolly bachelor
+contingent which overflowed house and table upon Sundays. When these
+single invitations came Annette invariably retired to her bedroom, and,
+having locked herself in there, refused to hold any sort of intercourse
+with Paul.
+
+'My dear,' he would say to soothe her, 'I am not going without you; but
+I can't force people to invite you, and we must just make the best of
+things.'
+
+So he grew to be something of a hermit; and all on a sudden he resolved
+to cut himself adrift from England, and to live abroad. Before his
+wanderings were over, he was destined to know Europe pretty thoroughly;
+but at this time his knowledge of it was limited to Paris, and here and
+there a bit of Northern France. He would break new ground. Antwerp would
+do as well as any other city for a starting-place, and within a day or
+two of the hour at which the fancy first occurred to him he was ready to
+start He crossed by the _Baron Osy_, took rooms in a hotel on the Groen
+Plate, and lived and worked there for a month or two under the dropping
+music of the cathedral chimes. The outfit of a man of letters is the
+simplest in the world. With a ream of writing-paper, a pint of ink, and
+sixpennyworth of pens, he is professionally provisioned for half a
+year. Paul had no need to be in personal touch either with publisher or
+stage-manager, and he knew his absence from England to be unmarked and
+unregretted. Annette and he seemed to get on well enough together. There
+was no real communion between them. Paul was all on fire about his work,
+and she had no more comprehension of his thoughts than a canary-bird
+would have had. But it was not possible for a man of his temperament to
+live constantly under the same roof, and to sit daily at the same
+table with anybody, male or female, without developing some kind of
+camaraderie. Mrs. Armstrong seemed to like the life fairly well, and to
+find a pleasure in the fleeting society of the birds of passage who
+went and came. She had dresses to her heart's content, and in her pretty
+gelid way enjoyed a good deal of popularity; but by-and-by, as summer
+again drew near, she wearied of her surroundings, and incited Paul to
+move. The work on which he had been engaged was finished and disposed
+of; there were a good many loose hundreds at the bank, and more were
+coming. He was ready for a holiday, and for Annette's sake was willing
+to persuade himself that he was in need of one. So in May weather they
+set off to make a round of the old Flemish country--Ghent, and Bruges,
+and Aix, and Mechlin. Thence they slid on to Namur, working slowly
+towards Switzerland in Paul's fancy, but stopping by mere hazard at
+Janenne, and being by a very simple accident enticed some four or five
+miles from the main line of their route to Montcourtois. They had been
+drawn aside in the first place to visit the famous grottoes of Janenne,
+and the jolly old _doyen_ of Montcourtois was their fellow-passenger in
+the brake which conveyed them to the station. The old priest was a man
+of learning, and in his day he had travelled, and had known the world.
+Paul and he fell into animated converse, and struck up an immediate
+liking for each other. It turned out, curiously enough, that, though the
+old gentleman had lived for twenty years within half a dozen miles of
+the wonderful grottoes, he had never been prompted to visit them until
+now. He was on the way to wipe out his reproach, and by the time
+the sight-seeing was over Paul found himself so fascinated by his
+simplicity, his bonhomie, and the charming, varied stream of his talk,
+that he must needs invite the old gentleman to dinner at the Hotel of
+the Three Friends, where preparations for his own reception for the
+night had been made. The old priest accepted the invitation at once, and
+early evening found them the only occupants of a great salon in which
+a hundred people might have dined with case. A brass lamp, suspended by
+chains from the ceiling, illumined their corner of the' centre table,
+and at the far end of the room a big stove bloomed red-hot all round
+like a magnified cherry. These preparations were scarcely needed, for
+the air was balmy, the windows were open, and the sky was yet full of
+the evening light of early summer. The voice of a stream not far away
+ran on with a ceaseless, light-hearted babble, and through the open
+windows the one street of the village was visible until it swerved away
+to the left There are a thousand villages like Montcour-tois; but it was
+the first of its genus Paul had known, and he found a quiet charm in it
+The Hotel of the Three Friends stood in the Place Publique, dominated
+by a brand-new town-hall; but all the rest of the place was quaint and
+old-fashioned. All the houses were distempered in various colours, and
+all their architects had worked after the decrees of the destinies, so
+that the street-line itself was full of gable-ends, and the edifices
+faced in as many directions as was possible. A sturdy, thick-set village
+girl, neat as a new pin, with cheeks hard and red, and shining like
+hard red apples, brought in the soup--a _soupe a la bonne femme_,
+and admirable of its kind--brought in a dish of fresh-caught trout
+excellently fried; followed this with veal cutlets; with a tart, and a
+local cheese which, though it had no fame beyond its own borders, was a
+surprise for an epicure. With the fish came a dusty, cobwebbed bottle
+in a cradle, and at the sight of it the _doyen_ lifted his eyebrows,
+and faintly smacked his lips. Paul, in ordering dinner, had asked the
+square-built Flemish waitress:
+
+'You have Burgundy?
+
+'But yes, sir,' the girl had answered, 'and of the best.'
+
+'Bring me a bottle of your best,' Paul had said, and had thought no more
+of the matter.
+
+But when the venerable cleric so twinkled at the sight of the dusty
+flagon in the threadbare bid wicker cradle, he was tempted to ask if
+they had anything very special before them.
+
+'My dear sir,' returned the _doyen_, 'it is a wine for an Emperor, and
+if I may be permitted to tell you so, its appearance is attributable to
+my presence here.'
+
+It was a noble vintage, and the _doyen_ grew eloquent over it.
+
+'It is here in the Ardennes,' he said, 'that you find the best Burgundy
+of the world. We have no vineyards of our own, though, if tradition can
+be trusted, they grew a good grape here hundreds of years ago; but we
+have cellarage, and here beneath our feet is a vault cut out of the
+living rock, the temperature of which does not vary one degree Reaumur
+on the hottest day in summer and the coldest night in winter. That is
+the right harbour for such a craft as this to sail into.' He touched
+the bottle affectionately with the tips of his beautifully-trimmed white
+fingers. 'You must not take me for a wine-bibber,' he said smilingly,
+'but all gifts of God are good, and this is the best that Heaven affords
+in this direction.'
+
+Paul rang the bell no great time later, and called for a second bottle.
+The _doyen_ protested, but with a discernible faintheartedness. He
+talked of vintages as the twilight fell and the lamp beamed more
+brightly on the snowy napery. Well, he had travelled, he had seen
+the world, he had been young. Of all wines in the world for him
+Johannesberg. One bottle, one truly imperial bottle, he remembered.
+
+'It was a physician of Paris, the most eminent, who travelled for his
+pleasure, and whose acquaintance I made in Rome. It is very long ago.
+The Holy Father was suffering agonies, and he endured them like a hero.
+But everybody feared that he was dying, and our Roman doctors could
+make nothing of the case at all. It occurred to somebody to speak to His
+Holiness of the doctor Gaston. The physicians in attendance were glad
+to invite him, and by a very simple and almost painless operation he
+removed the seat of trouble, and in a week His Holiness was himself
+again. His Holiness was full of gratitude, and would gladly have paid
+any fee the doctor had chosen to name. But he would have no fee at all.
+He was not a good son of the Church, but he was an excellent Christian
+all the same, and it was his pride to have restored so valuable a
+life. Gaston told me the whole story. "My child," said the Pope, "some
+souvenir of your own skill and kindness you shall accept from me; I
+insist upon it." Then the good doctor hardened his heart, and he said:
+"I am for these many years a collector of wines, and I have in Paris my
+little cellar, which is without its rival for its size. But there is
+one treasure which I cannot buy, nor beg, nor steal. It is the Imperial
+Johannes-berg. It goes alone to the crowned heads of Europe and to your
+Holiness. Rothschild cannot buy it with his millions. If I may beg but a
+bottle----" And His Holiness laughed, and "My good son," he said, "you
+shall have a dozen." And Papa was better than his word, for he sent
+thirteen. Gaston,' continued the ancient priest, laying a hand on the
+listener's sleeve, 'had six friends in Rome, of whom I was one. He
+resolved that the thirteenth bottle should be expended, and that he
+would store the rest We assembled--ah! my son, we assembled. There were
+little glasses of fair water handed round and cubes of bread like dice,
+and we sipped and nibbled, that our palates might be clean. Then the
+bottle was brought in with the tray of glasses, the right Rhine
+wine-glasses of pale green, with the vine-leaves and grape-bunches
+about the stem. And the bottle was opened, and---- You know your Scott?
+Do you remember how the bottle of claret "parfumed ze apartment"? Oh, it
+was so when that cork was drawn! Odours of flowers and old memories! It
+was nectar when we came to taste it It was of the kingliest, the most
+imperial.'
+
+Paul filled the priest's glass again and replenished his own, but the
+old man rose laughingly from the table.
+
+'I am something of a poet,' he said, 'in my imaginations, but I do not
+carry my fancies into practice. No more wine to-night.'
+
+Paul pressed him, but the old gentleman was firm. He yielded to the
+temptation of coffee and a cigar, and the two went on talking of trifles
+for half an hour. Annette had long since risen from the table, and had
+strolled to the far end of the room beyond the glowing stove. She had
+thrown open a French window there, and had stood for some time looking
+out upon the night when she called for Paul.
+
+'Come here; I want to speak to you.'
+
+Paul excused himself, and obeyed the summons. Beyond the French window
+lay a little alcove, about which a barren but full-leaved vine was
+trailed. The sky was still filled with a diffuse light, and the May
+moon, pale as yet, was rising like a silver canoe above the edge of a
+hill a mile away.
+
+'Paul,' said Annette, 'I want to stay here. There's a sort of peace
+about the place, and I should like to be here for a little while.'
+
+'Well, dear,' he answered, 'there are worse places in the world.'
+
+'No,' she whispered, drawing him down to her; 'I want to tell you
+something.' With her arm about his neck, she breathed into his ear:
+'There are only two of us, Paul; you must look out for a third.'
+
+He turned her face to his, and he saw that her eyes were moist and that
+her face was pale. The momentous thing had been prettily said, as if
+only a touch of fun and a touch of commonplace could make the sacredness
+of it bearable to either. In that second he forgot everything.
+Indifference melted, vanished, and he took her in his arms with a
+feeling he had never known before. How long they stood there he could
+not have told, but the voice of the priest awoke him from his thoughts.
+
+'I am afraid, Monsieur Armstrong,' said the _doyen_, 'that I delay my
+departure too long.'
+
+'Go to bed, darlipg,' Paul whispered. 'Good-night. I'll make your
+excuses. You mustn't show up before strangers with a face like that.'
+
+He pressed his lips to hers, took both hands ardently in his own for a
+second, and walked hastily back into the _salle a manger_. The _doyen_
+stood with his beaver on the table before him, and his white hands
+smoothing the folds of his soutane.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' cried Paul, 'but my wife called me away. She is
+suffering from some slight indisposition, and we have made up our minds
+to rest here for a little while.'
+
+'Indisposition!' cried the priest; 'I am sorry to hear that. But in one
+respect you are fortunate. Here in this _infecte_ little village--you
+would barely believe it, but 'tis true--we have the king of all European
+doctors. Shall I bring him to you?'
+
+'Are you indeed so fortunate? Paul asked laughingly. 'Bring him by all
+means.'
+
+'There is nothing pressing about the case? the _doyen_ asked.
+
+'Nothing pressing,' Paul responded.
+
+'The morrow will do, then?'
+
+'The morrow will do admirably.'
+
+The old priest withdrew with a cordial hand-shake, and Paul lit a cigar
+and sat down to look at the newly-revealed position of affairs. The
+alliance between Annette and himself had been of the most trivial sort,
+and he had condemned himself for it a thousand times. But now a new
+feeling took possession of him, and she had grown suddenly sacred in his
+eyes. The burden which had sometimes galled him had grown welcome in a
+single instant.
+
+The doctor came next day, a rotund man of benevolent aspect, with
+little smiling slits of eyes slightly turned up at the outer end, like a
+Chinaman's. He was familiarly known in the village as Le Chinois. But it
+did not take Paul long to learn that, in spite of the nickname, he was
+idolized by every inhabitant of the district for miles round. He was a
+man of private income, and all his professional earnings were spent upon
+his poor. In a fortnight Paul and he were thick as thieves. Le Chinois
+had travelled extensively, and appeared to be on terms of intimacy with
+the literature of every European people. He had not the faintest idea of
+the pronunciation of the English language, but he wrote it currently and
+with some approach to elegance, and his knowledge of English letters put
+Paul to shame. With all his learning and his philosophic agnosticism, he
+was as simple-hearted as a child. Annette took the greatest fancy to him
+and welcomed his visits, and played round him with a sprightliness her
+husband had never before observed in her. 'She is changing,' he thought,
+'and changing for the better.' The new conditions seemed as if they
+brought new life and developed a novel character. But he noticed that
+her outbursts of gaiety were followed invariably by deep depression. She
+would sit in the garden in the dusk of the early summer evenings alone,
+and if her solitude were intruded upon would wave him away without a
+word. It irritated her at such times even to be looked at, and Paul,
+deeply anxious for the time being to fall in with her every whim, would
+betake himself to the little cafe opposite, and chat there with the
+simple village folk. Sometimes M. le Prince, a scion of one of the
+noblest houses of Europe, who lived in retirement on an income of some
+three hundred sterling per annum, would drop in and sip his little
+glass of orgeat, and chatter with the peasants about crops and weather.
+Sometimes the doctor would spend a spare half-hour there in the evening,
+and sometimes the venerable _doyen_ himself, though he never actually
+entered the house except upon a pastoral visit, would take a seat
+outside and drink his after-dinner coffee amongst the members of his
+flock.
+
+Always after these quiet dissipations when Paul went home he found
+Annette asleep, and in a very little while each day became like another,
+and a routine was established. Annette was invariably a little fatigued
+in the morning, but brightened as the day went on. She was vivacious in
+the afternoon; by dinner-time she was in feverish high spirits. After
+dinner she became depressed and moody. Paul, observing these symptoms
+with tender interest, attributed them all to her condition, and assumed
+that they were natural.
+
+But one evening in mid-June an incident happened which for a time gave
+him genuine concern. Since he had resolved to settle in the village
+for some time, he had rented a small office in the hotel, which he had
+transformed into a study, and there he spent most of his waking time at
+work. On this particular day he had gone to his den immediately after
+luncheon, and had grown so absorbed in his labours that the dinner-bell
+had sounded unheard. He was aroused from his work by the apple-cheeked
+maid, and was told that dinner was already served. He dashed upstairs
+two steps at a time, laved his hands and face, and descended to the
+dining-room. Annette was not there. He inquired for her, and learned
+that she had gone out an hour or two before and had not yet returned.
+This caused him no anxiety, for she had made some acquaintances in the
+place, and had one or two houses at which she was accustomed to visit
+But when the meal was over and there was still no sign of her, he began
+to be vaguely inquiet, and, taking up his hat, he walked out into the
+tranquil brightness of the summer evening, and called from house to
+house to ask after her. But Madame Bulot had not seen her, nor had
+Madame Gerard, nor had the doctor, nor had little Mademoiselle Coquelin,
+the dressmaker. Madame Armstrong had been observed on the road which led
+to the Bois de Falaise some four hours ago, and that was the latest news
+of her. The vague inquiet began to deepen into serious misgiving. Paul
+walked rapidly to the Terre de Falaise, scoured the broad carriage-drive
+which had been cut through the wood, beat up one or two favourite little
+haunts of Annette's, and found no trace of her. He returned to the
+hotel, only to learn that she had not been seen. A terror of a thousand
+imagined accidents took hold of him, and he flew to the gendarmerie with
+intent to organize a search. But while he was discussing ways and means
+with the Juge d'Instruction, who had been hastily sent for from next
+door, a stable-keeper from the hotel ran up to inform him that Madame
+had been found, that she had been evidently dreadfully frightened, and
+was in hysterics. When he reached the hotel, breathless, he found a
+group of startled people in the corridor, and from the bedroom he could
+hear Annette's voice shrieking that they were dancing in the wood,
+and that their bones were white. He pushed eagerly through the knot of
+listeners, and made his way into the bedroom. The doctor was there, and
+warned him away at once.
+
+'You can do no good here,' he said; 'you will only distress yourself.'
+
+'There is no danger?' he asked, panting after his homeward run.
+
+'There is not the slightest atom of danger,' said the doctor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Here, in the wakeful night, high up in the monstrous hills, with this
+everlasting torrent raging in his ears, and the camp-fire out of doors
+there flaring, flickering, glowing, dying down--here in the fog of the
+forest fires and the solitude of the mountains, it is so easy to see
+things as they truly were. A shrug, a smile, a word, a silence, the lift
+of an eyebrow--things which had no apparent meaning a dozen years ago,
+which were either unnoticed or forgotten in an instant--are alive
+with monitions now. Not to have seen! Not to have guessed 'It looks
+incredible. A mule might have begun to read the riddle.
+
+Paul read nothing.
+
+And now, looking back from this smoky eyrie through all the intervening
+years, it seems as if the tragedy of a life might have been averted, as
+if a little weight, a little prescience, a little care, might have made
+the sum of life work out to a far other total.
+
+There has been no star visible in the heavens, nor any glimpse of a
+moon for four nights. The sun is the dimmest red ball in the daytime,
+a danger-signal lantern, seen through dirty glass. There is a yeast at
+work in the Solitary's mind It is as if the material universe being
+cut away from him--save just this solid remnant of it in which he
+lounges--there were space found for something not belonging to it to
+draw near him.
+
+Over and over again the lonely man had read his father's last letter,
+and now in the hot, oppressive midnight it repeated itself in his mind:
+
+'At my father's death a change began to work in my opinions. I had
+convinced myself that this life was all that man enjoyed or suffered,
+but I began to be conscious that I was under tutelage. I began--at first
+faintly and with much doubting--to think that my father's spirit and my
+own were in communion. I knew that he had loved me fondly, and to me he
+had always seemed a pattern of what is admirable in man. Now he seemed
+greater, wiser, milder. I grew to believe that he had survived the
+grave, and that he had found permission to be my guide and guardian. The
+creed which slowly grew up in my mind and heart, and is now fixed there,
+was simply this: that as a great Emperor rules his many provinces, God
+rules the universe, employing many officers--intelligences of loftiest
+estate, then intelligences less lofty; less lofty still beneath these,
+and at the last the humbler servants, who are still as gods to us, but
+within our reach, and His messengers and agents. Then God seemed no
+longer utterly remote and impossible to belief, and I believed. And
+whether this be true or false, I know one thing: this faith has made me
+a better man than I should have been without it. My beloved father, wise
+and kind, has seemed to lead me by the hand. I have not dared in the
+knowledge of his sleepless love to do many things to which I have been
+tempted. I have learned from him to know--if I know anything--that
+life from its lowest form is a striving upward through uncounted and
+innumerable grades, and that in each grade something is learned that
+fits us for the next, or something lost which has to be won back again
+after a great purgation of pain and repentance.
+
+'It is three days since I began to write, and I am so weak that I can
+barely hold the pen. Send this to Paul He has gone far wrong. He will
+come back again to the right. I have asked that I may guide him, and my
+prayer has been granted. From the hour at which I quit this flesh
+until he joins me my work is appointed me, and I shall not leave him.
+Good-bye, dear child Be at peace, for all will yet be well.
+
+'When Paul sees these last words of mine, he will know that I am with
+him.'
+
+Thus, word for word, he went over it all again, for the hundredth time
+or more, and on a sudden his soul seemed to flow from him in a great
+longing. He rose unconsciously, and stepped beyond the doorway of his
+tent, and stretched his arms wide to the night.
+
+'Be with me! oh! be with me, and let me know and feel that you are here.'
+If it be madness to believe so, I will not care!'
+
+But that thought froze him. What right had he to welcome madness? Of
+what avail was it to crown a wasted life with such a folly?
+
+'You believed it, dear old dad?' he said. 'But how shall I? Can I dodge
+myself? Can I slink by a side-road out of sight of my own intelligence?'
+
+He stood long with dejected head and drooping hands, and then groping
+his way back to his couch, lay down again.
+
+And his dreams came back to him.
+
+He was suddenly afire over a new idea for a comedy, and from the rising
+of the sun to the going down of the same he slaved at it and exulted
+in it day by day. He made long tramps into the country and lost himself
+continuously. Pretty generally he awoke from his fancies to find himself
+ravenously hungry, and without so much as a hint of an orient in his
+mind. But almost any village or hamlet was good for bread, of a sort,
+and for trustworthy eggs and new milk; and his necessities brought him
+into contact with the Walloon language, in which--or something very like
+it--Froissart wrote his chronicles. He picked up nuggets in the way
+of character--clean gold--and whether he were wandering with his own
+thoughts or struggling through the medium of this new tongue towards
+a knowledge of rustic Belgian life, or pruning and digging about his
+imaginations in his workshop, he was happy as a man need be.
+
+Annette and he saw less and less of each other, but that was a
+circumstance to which he resigned himself with ease. They had taken two
+rooms at the corner of their corridor to begin with, a large room and a
+smaller one, and there was no need to move from their original quarters.
+The smaller chamber was used as a dressing-room. Paul's circular tub
+was there, and the trunks with which the pair travelled, and coats and
+dresses were hung about the walls. But it was Annette's whim one day in
+Paul's absence to have a bed set up in this second apartment, and that
+same night, rising late from work, he found himself locked from his
+wife's room. He had not been consulted as to this arrangement, and it
+struck a little cold upon him, but thinking that he would talk it over
+in the morning, he betook himself to sleep. Next day Annette complained
+of headache, and the pallor of her face and the heaviness of her eyes
+were a sufficing certificate to suffering.
+
+'I was very, very ill last night,' she said pleadingly, 'and I wanted to
+be alone. Oh! I can't tell you how much I wanted to be alone.'
+
+Paul took her hand in his, and smoothed it between his own. The skin was
+harsh and dry, and the little hand felt almost like a hot coal.
+
+'My dear,' he said anxiously, 'you are quite in a high fever. I shall
+run away for Laurent instantly.'
+
+'Why will you pester me?' she asked, with a weary little spurt of
+temper. 'I have no more need for a doctor than you have. I understand my
+own condition perfectly, and I want to go to sleep.'
+
+'But, my dear,' said Paul, 'these symptoms seem to be increasing, and
+you really ought to have advice. Laurent is an able man; you can trust
+him, I am sure.'
+
+'Oh! she cried, 'your voice rasps me in the very middle of my brain. 'Go
+away and let me sleep, for pity's sake.'
+
+'Let me make you a cup of tea,' he said, subduing his voice to a
+whisper. 'I have a whole packet of that lovely stuff I bought before we
+left London.'
+
+'Pray go,' she answered him.
+
+There was nothing for it but to obey, and he went from the room a little
+disconsolate.
+
+'This,' he said to himself as he walked down to the _salle a manger_' is
+what the poor things have to go through. Love and marriage are not
+all beer and skittles for either party, but they are pitiable for
+the woman.' Even now there was no deep attachment in his mind towards
+Annette, and he blamed himself for his want of feeling. 'I owe her
+everything,' he thought--'everything that I can bring her. I suppose she
+loved me when she came to me. God knows!'
+
+He was sorry for her, but he upbraided himself for the thought that he
+would have been just as sorry for any other woman who suffered in the
+same way, if only her trouble were brought near enough for him to be
+aware of it. He had bound himself down to a life without love, but there
+was an exquisite disloyalty in the mere admission of that thought.
+
+He was too disturbed to care for breakfast, and after drinking a cup of
+coffee he lit his pipe and strolled in search of the doctor. The good
+old Chinois was munching his pistolet, and sipping at a great bowl of
+hot milk just tinctured with coffee, and his man was already at the
+door with the queer old buggy and the queer old horse familiar to the
+country-side over a circuit of half a dozen leagues from its centre.
+
+'I have come,' said Paul, 'to talk to you about Mrs. Armstrong. I don't
+like the look of things at all.'
+
+'Ha!' said Laurent 'Tell me, what do you observe?'
+
+'I notice,' Paul answered, 'a dreadful variableness of mood, a feverish
+exaltation, followed by a serious depression, an increasing desire to
+be alone, a sort of nervous resentment of any inquiry as to her state
+of health. That, I think, is about all. I dare say that everything I may
+have noticed may be attributable to her present condition, and that in
+my inexperience of such things I may be unduly nervous; but I wish you'd
+make an opportunity of seeing her casually in the course of the day. For
+Heaven's sake, doctor,' he added with a laugh, 'don't let her guess that
+I sent you. The one thing she most resents is having the mere suggestion
+offered that she should see a doctor.'
+
+Laurent rubbed his close-cropped silver head with one hand, and with the
+other wrung a few drops of liquid from his huge moustache, looking up
+at Paul meanwhile with a crafty benevolence in his eye, like a
+supernaturally wise old parrot.
+
+'Ah yes!' he hummed in a deep nasal tone, which Paul knew well already
+as being characteristic of him when he had to reason out a problem as he
+talked. 'Monsieur Armstrong, the man who has half-confidences with his
+physician is in serious error.'
+
+'I don't understand,' said Paul.
+
+'You know of nothing,' said Laurent, 'which would help to explain these
+symptoms apart from the fact that madame believes herself to be about to
+become a mother?'
+
+'Nothing else,' Paul answered in some astonishment, 'Unless----'
+
+Laurent, holding up his bowl in both hands, echoed:
+
+'Sinon?----'
+
+'Well,' said Paul, 'I'm afraid that I may have been a little neglectful
+lately. I have a piece of work in hand which occupies me a great deal. I
+may, perhaps, be too absorbed in it.'
+
+'That, of course, is perhaps possible,' said Laurent 'I will contrive
+to see her in the course of the day, and you may trust an old doctor's
+_savoir faire_. She shall not guess that you sent me.'
+
+Immediately upon this the doctor's servant rapped at the door to say
+that all was ready, and Paul took his leave. He went immediately to his
+study, and there the embers of last night's fire, being fanned ever
+so little, began to glow again, and he became absorbed in his work,
+insomuch that when the bell rang for dejeuner at noon he was amazed to
+notice how quickly time had flown. When he got to table Annette was in
+her place, still looking a trifle pale and heavy-eyed, but evidently
+much relieved since he had last seen her.
+
+'I want you to do me a little favour, Paul,' she said
+
+'Yes,' he answered gaily.
+
+'I want what you call--what is your word for it? Oh yes, I know--I want
+what you call a pick-me-up. Will you share a pint of wine with me? I
+want a glass--just one glass of champagne. I quite long for it.'
+
+'Why, yes,' said Paul, 'that is a simple matter enough,' and he gave the
+order for the wine.
+
+Annette drank the greater part of it, and began to glow and sparkle.
+The colour came back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes. She was
+unusually bright and animated, and chattered all manner of good-humoured
+nonsense with the juge de paix and the garde-champetre.
+
+'That is your medicine, my dear,' said Paul, in a half-whisper, tapping
+the bottle with a finger-nail. 'I shall prescribe it for you daily.'
+
+She made a little face at him and laughed. 'I don't like the stuff,'
+she said, 'very often, but I longed for it this morning; and, oh! I am
+better for it.'
+
+They were as much at home in the Hotel of the Three Friends by this
+time as if they had lived there all their lives. There was no stranger
+present at the meal, and it was not at all a surprising thing when
+Annette floated away to the piano at the further end of the room and
+began to tinkle at the keys there. She was by no means an accomplished
+musician, but she played a few little airs with a sort of spontaneity
+and grace, and she had a sweet, thin, bird-like voice, a clear and
+liquid note, which was perhaps her greatest charm. She searched among
+the music upon the top of the piano, flicking the untidy scattered
+leaves until she found a song she knew.
+
+'Music, messieurs,' she said, 'is an aid to digestion; I will make a
+sandwich of sentiment for you--cheese on the one side, dessert on the
+other, and love in the middle.'
+
+The garde and the juge and the local huissier and the bachelor chemist
+all beat the hafts of their knives on the table in applause, and she
+sang, with a vivacity and archness Paul had never before observed in
+her, a snatch of cheap Belgian sentimentalism:
+
+    'Toux les deux, la main dans la main,
+    Nous poursuivions notre chemin,
+    Sous la celeste voute;
+    Les doux echos mysterieux
+    Repeter nos baisers joyeux
+    Tout le long--tout le long de la route.'
+
+And whilst she was warbling the door of the salle opened and in walked
+Laurent.
+
+'Pardon, madame,' he cried; 'do not permit me to interrupt you.'
+
+But Annette had already risen from the piano, and had closed the lid of
+the instrument.
+
+'My sister has gone to Janenne,' he explained, 'and I am left
+breakfastless. You hungry rascals have not eaten everything, I hope?'
+
+The Flemish maid would lay an instant cover for Monsieur Laurent, and
+room was made for him at the table with something like enthusiasm. He
+began to talk vivaciously scraps of local news gathered on his morning
+rounds among his patients, and from time to time he turned to Paul to
+explain some rustic allusion or phrase. He made himself charming, and
+since he did not explain that he had purposely dismissed his sister for
+the day in order to find an excuse for his visit to the hotel, Annette
+had no present suspicion of him. They had a little playful badinage
+together, and Laurent, turning mock-sentimental, lamented his celibacy
+so quaintly that she broke into peals of silvery laughter over him. Paul
+was pleased with her, and half inclined to be proud of her for the first
+time in his life, though he had a nervous fear lest her gaiety should
+topple over like an unskilled artist on the slack wire.
+
+By-and-by Laurent set about his meal in a business-like fashion, and
+Paul strolled quietly from the room. The others, juge and garde and
+huissier and chemist, chief of gendarmerie, and all the rest of
+the regular frequenters of the table, were called away by their own
+avocations. Paul, sitting with his study-door ajar, looking as if
+prepared to be absorbed in labour at any moment, watched them as they
+went out by ones and twos, and knew that at last Laurent and Annette
+were together. The heat of summer noon was in the air. The _place_ was
+empty, and there was everywhere a humming silence through which his ear
+discerned now and then the deeper hum of Laurent's voice. Not a word
+was audible, or would have been even had Paul cared to play the
+eavesdropper, but one might have thought that the doctor was preaching a
+sermon.
+
+'He's a wise old man, is Laurent,' said Paul to himself, 'and, for a
+bachelor, he seems to have an uncommon good knowledge of women. That
+comes out of a doctor's practice, I dare say.'
+
+The heat of the day, the single glass of wine he had taken, and the
+hearty meal he had eaten after his morning fast, all combined to make
+him drowsy, and he had fallen into a half-slumber in which he saw hazily
+the creatures of his fancy moving behind the footlights, when the door
+of the dining-room opened, and he heard Laurent's words of farewell:
+
+'Croyez moi, Madame Armstrong, c'est une affaire assez grave. Mais
+courage, courage! Et--bon jour--et bonne esperance.'
+
+Then the door closed, and the doctor's sturdy feet in their thick-soled
+boots went echoing along the parquet, clattered for a moment on the
+pavement outside, and were lost to hearing.
+
+Paul woke with a numbness at the heart. The affair was serious; but
+courage, and good hope! That sounded grave. He rose from his chair, the
+pipe between his lips still sending up a spiral of blue smoke. He was
+asking himself whether he should go in to the next apartment either
+to comfort or to question, when the door of the _salle a manger_ again
+opened, and Annette stole into his room. She pushed the door wide and
+stood framed for an instant against the shadow of the corridor. She was
+dressed in some filmy white stuff, with a great blue bow at the throat
+and a bow of scarlet in her hair. She had an odd taste in contrasts,
+but the Parisian touch was always evident in what she wore, and if
+her scheme of personal adornment were sometimes quaint, it was always
+artistic. Paul noticed then, and remembered always, a strange pathos in
+her look. She seemed for the moment curiously childlike. Her face had
+once more lost its colour, and her eyes, which were thick with tears,
+were like those of a child grown frightened in loneliness, and searching
+doubtfully and almost in terror for the homeward way.
+
+She put out her hands towards him with a gesture of appeal. It seemed as
+if she asked his pardon, though why that should be he could not guess,
+and as he made a hasty movement towards her she entered the room
+suddenly, and thrust the door vehemently behind her so that the corridor
+rang with the echo of the sound.
+
+'Paul,' she said, 'Paul!' and sinking on her knees before him, she threw
+her arms round him and began to cry bitterly.
+
+He tried to raise her, but her arms clung tightly, and he could do
+nothing but stand there awkwardly and smooth her hair with foolish,
+half-articulate expressions of sympathy. She cried as if broken-hearted
+for a time, and when at last his caressing fingers raised her face
+towards his own, her chin and throat were wet with tears, and her eyes
+were still brimming. He coaxed her with much difficulty to an arm-chair,
+and when he had seated her there he knelt beside her with an arm about
+her waist.
+
+'What is it, little woman?' he asked. 'Dear little woman, what is it?'
+
+He had striven in vain with his disengaged hand to draw away the
+interlaced fingers she had knitted across her eyes, but at this appeal
+she cast her arms abroad and looked at him with a swift intentness
+through her tears.
+
+'You mean it?' she asked with an eager fierceness in her eyes and voice.
+
+'Mean it?' he answered. 'What, the dear little woman? Of course I mean
+it.'
+
+'Paul,' she said, 'if you will only love me, if you will only strive
+with me, I will love and worship you all my days.'
+
+'What can I do?' he asked. 'Tell me, and I will do it'
+
+'Oh!' she cried, beating the air with her hands, 'these moods, these
+follies! they are my own fault I am dividing myself from you. I am
+breaking my own heart; I am miserable for no reason. Help me, Paul, help
+me! Be at least my friend!'
+
+He was not a man to whom such an appeal could be made in vain, and his
+heart acquitted him of any falsehood when he assured her that he loved
+her, and would yield her any earthly service in his power.
+
+'But, sweetheart,' he said, 'tell me how I am to help you. Don't think
+that there is any reproach in what I say, but often when I wish to be
+near you you banish me, and I have to go, because all my thought is not
+to harass you. I heard what Laurent said just now----'
+
+Her face hardened into an expression of inquiry. Her black brows shot
+down level, over her brown eyes, and the eyes gloomed at him with a
+threat in them.
+
+'You heard?' she said.
+
+'Yes,' he responded caressingly, 'I heard his parting words, "l'affaire
+est assez grave--mais courage, et bonne esperance."'
+
+'Is that all you heard?' she demanded, bending the level challenge of
+her brows still lower, and snaking away her form from his embrace as if
+she feared it.
+
+'I heard no more,' said Paul.
+
+'Ah, well!' she answered in a sudden lassitude. She fell back into the
+arm-chair with closed eyes, and suffered her hands to fall laxly on
+either side of her knees. 'You will find me a changed girl, Paul. I am
+going to have done with my moods, and I am going to follow--I am going
+to follow--what is it I am going to follow? M. Laurent knows. Oh yes, it
+is the goddess of hygiene! I am to bathe, and I am to drive, and I am
+to walk, and I am to be equably cheerful, and I am to give up my black
+coffee and my strong tea and my eau des Carmes, and I am never to drink
+wine until dinner-time, and then only two glasses--two little glasses of
+claret or burgundy--and then I am to be quite an angel of good temper,
+and everybody is to adore me. That is the verdict of M. Laurent. Do you
+think, Paul, I shall be charming when I have done all these things?'
+
+'You would be charming, little sweetheart,' said Paul, 'whether you
+did them or no. It is not a question of charm, but of health, dear,
+and Laurent is a very sage old gentleman indeed, and you may follow his
+counsel with perfect certainty. I can't help owning,' he went on, 'that
+I've been a little nervous lately about the fluctuation of your spirits,
+and I'm glad he happened to drop in and have a talk with you.'
+
+She flashed from languor into a mood of vivid irony. Her lips curled,
+her eyes opened wide with a dancing beryl-coloured flame behind them,
+and her eyebrows arched in a sublime disdain.
+
+'You didn't send him?' she asked
+
+'I?' said Paul, with a guilty stammer--' I--send him?'
+
+'Now, before you lie,' said Annette, with a tragic gesture of the hand,
+'hear me. The window of our dressing-room happens--just happens, by
+God's providence to confute a fool--to command a view of Dr. Laurent's
+door. I saw you go in; I could even hear you knock. Do you think you can
+deceive me? Pah!'
+
+She rose, evaded his arm, swept from the room in a kind of torrential
+rage, banged the door behind her, and was gone.
+
+He was so amazed at it all--the swift interchange of penitence
+to self-abasement, languor, challenge, suspicion, wrath, and
+accusation--that he stood dumfounded, not knowing what to think. He
+heard the flying feet and swirling skirts as Annette raced upstairs. In
+the drowsy stillness of the afternoon he heard the door of her bedroom
+close with a decisive click, and then the sharp shooting of the bolt and
+the shrieking of the key as it turned in its unaccustomed wards. Still
+standing there in wonderment, he listened to her footsteps overhead
+as she dashed through the dressing-room, and an instant later came the
+slamming and the locking of a second door.
+
+He sat down, reached mechanically for his pipe, beat out the ashes from
+it on the level tiles of the hearth, and mechanically filled and lit it.
+He searched his mind for a clue to the whole extraordinary business
+of the last half-hour, and could find but one: the anxieties of coming
+maternity, and possibly the change of frame which women suffer at such
+times, had unhinged Annette, and had disturbed her mind and nerves from
+their ordinary balance. He longed for an interview with Laurent, but he
+dared not seek it. He would have sent a messenger to him, but he also
+might be watched by those keen and too observant eyes.
+
+As he sat and thought things over he gradually gathered courage, and at
+length he began to discern a touch of comedy in that which had so much
+disturbed him. It was a very tender and touching comedy, but it was
+comedy all the same--a bird-soul of light and laughter hovering over
+a lake of tears. The _dear_ little woman! He had thought her
+unimpressionable, even a little stupid, and he saw now how much he had
+wronged her. She was full of emotions he had never suspected, and could
+not even now analyze. Her very waywardness, the strange caprices of
+feeling which had so astonished him as they chased each other, began to
+look charming in the new light his thoughts cast upon them.
+
+'Thus it is,' said Paul to himself, 'we come into the world casting our
+shadows before us, and making laughter and trouble of all sorts for our
+makers before we are born.'
+
+It was obviously the mother's lot to suffer much. It was obviously
+the man's business to be very patient, very tender. He began to think
+himself exceeding good and wise. He was learning to appreciate a
+new feature in human nature, something which had its element of
+unpleasantness if not rightly seen and understood, but, being so seen
+and understood, a very beautiful and tender thing indeed. There was a
+sacred shyness in his thoughts, but overriding this a triumphant tender
+understanding of the humours of the situation which tickled him most
+delicately. It would be easy to be patient now that he understood so
+well, and he resolved upon patience comfortably.
+
+He sat so absorbed in his own fancies and feelings that he was unaware
+of the rumble of a carriage and the 'clicking of horses' hoofs over the
+cobbles of the _place_, but he knew of these things a moment later when
+the broad-beamed Evariste rapped at his study-door, and announced two
+gentlemen to see him. Straight upon her heels came Darco in a silk hat
+of splendid lustre, and a nobly frogged overcoat with costly astrachan
+at cuffs and collar, as though, instead of being the sweltering day
+it was, it had been mid-winter. Behind him came Pauer, in tweeds and a
+white waistcoat, his face gold colour with his ancient jaundice, and
+his eyes a pale saffron. They were both in the best of good humours, and
+Darco stood on tiptoe to take Paul by the shoulders.
+
+'Ve have done id!' he cried in a voice of triumph. 'Ve have done id this
+time, ant no mistake!'
+
+'What have you done?' asked Paul.
+
+'Vot have we done, Pauer--eh? Vot haf we done?' cried Darco. 'Tell him
+and have done with it,' said Pauer.
+
+'Ve have bought the Goncreve,' said Darco, with a glowing air of
+triumph.
+
+'Bought the what?' asked Paul.
+
+'The Congreve Theatre,' Pauer explained.
+
+'Ah!'said Paul.
+
+'That is vot I am zayink,' cried Darco. 'Ve haf bought the Goncreve. It
+is in the handts of the decorators now. Ve shall oben in the first week
+of Sebtemper, ant ve are coing for the gloves. Ve are coing to oben with
+a gomedy. Do you hear? A gomedy. Ant you ant I are coing to write that
+gomedy. Do you understandt?' He slipped out of his overcoat, and threw
+it into the arm-chair in the corner. Then he banged the lustrous hat
+upon the table, and snatching up a pen, thrust it into Paul's hand. 'Ve
+are coing to wride that gomedy, ant ve are coing to begin at vonce--eh?'
+
+'Why, certainly,' said Paul. 'Have you got an idea to work on?'
+
+'My poy,' said Darco, 'I am primming with iteas. I am itching all ofer
+with iteas, as if I were living in a bag of vleas. I am Cheorge Dargo.
+Ven you find Cheorge Dargo without iteas you may co to the nearest
+ghemist ant ask for poison. Take your ben ant sit down, ant I will show
+you if I haf iteas or no.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+The work thus abruptly begun lasted for weeks, and Darco's enthusiasm
+drove Paul before it as if it had been a hurricane. Pauer lounged for
+a day or two, and then betook his golden visage and saffron eyes to
+London, leaving the pair to their labours. Paul and Darco worked on an
+average twelve hours a day, and it happened occasionally that a group of
+terrified _commis voyageurs_ would assemble in the passage outside the
+study anticipating murder, whilst Darco, in Alsatian English, declaimed
+the passion of his heroine. There were deep wells of laughter here and
+there in the course of that dramatic pilgrimage.
+
+'Now, vat I want,' said Darco, 'is just this: It is Binda's endrance.
+She is a leedle vat you would call distraught, not mat, but ankrished.
+She is very pretty, she is very bale. She stands at the door, and Raoul
+does not see her. She is there for vive zeconds to a tick, not more, not
+less--vive zeconds; write it down. Enter Binda, pause, unobserved, vive
+zeconds. Have you got it down? She is priddy, she is bale, a leedle
+touch of colour under the eyes; she is tressed in vite, some filmy kind
+of stuff, with a plue bow at the throat and a bit of scarlet ribbon, or
+red flower, or zomethings, in her hair. And zo she stands at the door
+and she looks at Raoul, and he toes not know she is there, ant vor just
+those vive zeconds there is no music, not a note, and then---- Look
+here, I am Cheorge Dargo; I can write a blay, and stage a blay, and
+baint the zeenery for a blay, and I can gompose the music for a blay,
+and I can berform on every damned inztrument in the orghestra. And this
+is vod Binda does: Bale and bretty, do you zee? at the door for vive
+zilent zeconds, and then with all her zoul one great appeal, she crosses
+to Raoul at his desk petween zecond and third O.P., ant she coes like
+this.'
+
+The fat, brief-statured man waddled in his enthusiasm from Binda's
+imaginary entering-place towards Paul with an allure of comedy-pathos
+so piercing in its effect that the amanuensis cast both hands in the air
+with a shriek of helpless mirth, and, losing his balance, wallowed on
+the floor amidst untidy heaps of books, newspapers, and manuscript.
+
+'Vod is the madder?' Darco cried, rushing towards Paul, and leaning over
+him with instant solicitude.
+
+Darco's collaborateur was smitten with a sudden shame and repentance.
+
+'A kind of spasm,' he said breathlessly--'a pain just here.'
+
+Darco helped him to his feet.
+
+'You are too emotional, tear poy,'he said; 'you are too easily vorked
+upon. I will rink the pell for a prandy-ant-zoda, ant you shall lie town
+vor a leettle while.'
+
+It was the thick-set Evariste who brought the syphon bottle and the
+small carafe of brandy and the tumblers, and it was she who caught
+Paul on her broad Flemish bosom when the drink, which he had accepted
+soberly, went the wrong way, and with a wild snort into his tumbler he
+fell backwards.
+
+'Le bauvre cheune homme a dombe zupidement malade.'
+
+The poor young man was horribly afraid at first of having irredeemably
+hurt Darco's feelings, but that excellent enthusiast had not even the
+beginning of an idea that it was possible for anyone to laugh at him
+unless he chose of purpose aforethought to be laughable. Thus the
+episode passed lightly enough, but Paul was continually in danger of a
+reversion to it whenever the distraught heroine appeared upon the scene.
+
+He saw but little of Annette during the weeks of labour to which Darco's
+new enterprise enforced him. She slept alone, and was rarely accessible
+before the mid-day breakfast or later than the dinner-hour. Laurent
+visited her almost daily, and she seemed to submit to his attentions
+with a better grace than she had shown at first; but she was still
+subject to those rapid and violent alternations of mood which had
+already perplexed and alarmed her husband. She had apparently conceived
+an aversion to being seen abroad, and it was with the greatest
+difficulty that she could be persuaded to take an occasional carriage
+drive.
+
+'I shall venture to advise you,' said Laurent to Paul 'You tell me that
+your work is almost finished, and that in a day or two you are setting
+out for London.'
+
+'Yes,' said Paul.
+
+'You will do well to take Mrs. Armstrong with you,' Laurent said. 'She
+is in need of change and distraction. This quiet, dead-alive existence
+is not good for her. You must insist upon her shaking herself free of
+the habits of seclusion into which she is falling. I should urge you
+very strongly to find some good creature of her own sex who would be
+a companion to her. She is living too much alone; she has too few
+interests.'
+
+'Well, of course,' Paul answered, 'that is very largely my fault; but
+the press of work is over now, and I shall be able to give more time and
+care to her.'
+
+'You will find it advisable,' said Laurent, with a certain meaning in
+his face and voice which Paul at the moment could not fathom.
+
+Something occurred to put an end to their conversation, and it was not
+resumed before Paul's departure with Darco for London. When it came to
+the point Annette flatly refused to go to England. She averred that
+she was not strong enough to travel, that she was altogether better and
+happier where she was than she hoped to be elsewhere.
+
+'You will be back in a month's time,' she urged. 'You will be busy all
+the while you are away. The theatre will claim you day and night, and
+I should be moping in some great hotel without a soul to speak to. I am
+quite at home amongst the people here, and they are used to me and to my
+ways.'
+
+Paul urged Laurent's suggestion upon her, and she received it with an
+unexpected anger.
+
+'What? A companion? And may I ask you why?'
+
+'For no other earthly reason than that you should have a friend at
+hand--somebody who might on occasion be useful to you.'
+
+'Oh no,' said Annette, tossing her head, and then looking askance at
+him, with half-veiled eyes: 'you would like to have me watched and spied
+upon, and to have a report of my conduct sent to you, as if I were a
+prisoner or a maniac.'
+
+'My dear child,' said Paul, in sheer amazement, 'what extraordinary
+dream is this? What has put so strange a fancy in your mind?'
+
+'Tell me,' cried Annette, suddenly whirling round upon him, 'what is it
+you suspect? What intrigue? What plot? What secret?'
+
+'Come, come,' he said, 'there is no plot--no secret But you know that
+you are not quite yourself of late, and it is not right or kind to leave
+you here in your present delicate health without some responsible person
+to look after you.'
+
+'Has M. Laurent been poisoning your mind against me?' she demanded, with
+a curious slowness. She advanced a foot as she spoke, and moved forward
+towards him with a something between fear and anger in her eyes.
+
+'My dear child,' he answered, 'what strange illusions are you nursing?
+Intrigues and plots, and watching and reports! Don't believe in any such
+nonsense, I implore you.'
+
+'What has Laurent been telling you about me? I insist--I _will_ know.'
+
+'Laurent has been telling me that he thinks you are likely to find a
+change beneficial, and that you ought not to be left here alone.'
+
+'Why not?' she asked, with a flash of rage. 'Why am I incapable of
+taking care of myself?'
+
+'You are not strong or well,' said Paul. 'You are not quite mistress of
+your own emotions.'
+
+'Ah!' she cried, 'now we are to have the accusation. I am going mad! Is
+that it? You would like to get rid of me on that ground? Do I understand
+at last?'
+
+Paul would have been blind if he had failed to see that beneath the air
+of scorn she strove to wear there was some real terror in her mind, and
+he did his best to soothe it.
+
+'All these things are the merest fancies,' he began.
+
+'Oh yes,' she broke in. 'Delusions! That is step number one. We suffer
+from delusions.'
+
+'If you believe in anything of the sort that you suggest, you are
+mistaken. If you wish to be happy, you must banish all that nonsense
+from your mind. It _is_ pure nonsense, dearest. Why should Laurent try
+to poison my mind? He likes you very well. He takes a warm interest
+in you, to the best of my belief. But you are really very fanciful and
+strange to-day, and you have been giving yourself up far too much to
+solitude for two months past. It is your duty to yourself and me to
+accept Laurent's advice. You must not be left here alone. You may choose
+your own companion. She shall be entirely at your orders. You shall
+engage her yourself; you shall pay her salary; she shall be at your own
+control.'
+
+'I know,' she answered, tapping her foot upon the floor. 'I know. The
+truth is, you never really cared for me, and now you have grown tired.
+You want to be rid of me.'
+
+'Now, that,' said Paul, 'is not only nonsense, it is very wicked
+nonsense, and I will not permit it The whole matter lies with yourself.
+If you continue to nurse those wrong and foolish thoughts, you will make
+it necessary for me to insist upon your obedience. If you will behave
+like a sensible creature, I may feel justified in yielding to your
+wish, and leaving you behind. But if I have any more of these absurd
+suspicions I shall not venture to leave you here.'
+
+He spoke with a purposed sternness, but with something of a heartache,
+too. There was no escape in his own mind from the belief that the whole
+change which had of late revealed itself in Annette was due to the
+fact of approaching maternity, and he had a man's natural pity for her
+sufferings. He bore her fancies with patience, but he thought it best
+for her that he should feign some anger at them.
+
+The plan seemed to act for the time being at least, for after a moment's
+incertitude, in which she seemed to battle with herself, she turned her
+humid brown eyes upon him, and said softly:
+
+'I am very foolishly suspicious sometimes, Paul. I know--oh, I know that
+I am not the girl I used to be. Bear with me, dear. I shall be different
+by-and-by.'
+
+'I am sure of that,' he answered, and she approaching him with an
+appealing languor in her eyes, and in the carriage of her whole figure,
+he took her into his arms, and for a minute or two she cried quietly
+upon his shoulder. He patted and caressed her, and she looked up with a
+quivering face.
+
+'I will never think or say those things again. I know how wrong they
+are, but, Paul, they come into my mind, and I cannot resist them
+sometimes. But I will--I will in future. You shall never hear them any
+more. But I want you to believe me, dearest, in just this one little
+thing. It will be the best and kindest thing that you can do for me
+to leave me here alone whilst you are away in London. I am not without
+friends here, when I can find the courage and the strength to see them.
+M. Laurent will look after me. You will write to me every day, won't
+you? I shall not be lonely. But the idea of having a stranger about me,
+fussing and inquiring, is horrible. I can't bear it.'
+
+'Very well, dear,'said Paul, greatly relieved at the turn things had
+taken, 'you shall have your way. But you must remember, dear '--he spoke
+as soothingly as he could--' it is my duty to see that you are cared for
+properly, and I must not leave you to yourself unless I am quite
+assured beforehand that you are certain to be bright and brave when I am
+gone.'He placed his hand beneath her chin, and coaxed her eyes to meet
+his own. 'You won't nourish these distressing fancies any more, will
+you?'
+
+'No,' she answered, clinging to him; 'they are all gone. They are all
+done with. You will be kind and good to me, Paul--I know you will. It
+isn't a very great favour for a grown-up woman to ask to be allowed to
+take care of herself, is it, Paul, darling?'
+
+'That must depend,' he answered gaily, 'whether the grown-up woman is
+well enough and strong enough for the task.'
+
+'Ah, well,' said Annette with an equal brightness, 'you shall see.'
+
+There were still two days' work to be done at the comedy, and Darco was
+resolute not to leave for London until all was finished. The first two
+acts were already in rehearsal at the Congreve, and Pauer, who was one
+of those old stagers of the profession who know their business upside
+down and inside out, was in superintendence until Darco should arrive to
+mould the whole production to his own exigent fancy.
+
+The change in Annette was remarkable. She had evidently made up her mind
+for a struggle with herself, and she kept her inequalities of mood in
+astonishing control, all things considered. She became interested in the
+work in hand, and took some trifle of needlework to the study for the
+final reading of the piece between Darco and her husband Paul, with
+the manuscript before him, acted the whole comedy as brilliantly as
+an arm-chair rendering could go, and Darco with notebook and pencil
+listened in keenly attentive silence, note-taking here and there.
+
+'Id is a gread vork,' he announced solemnly when it was all over. 'Id is
+peautifully written, and that is your affair, younk Armstronk. But the
+goncebtion is clorious, ant that is my affair. Vot? Not? I am Cheorge
+Dargo, and I know my trade.'
+
+They were both up at four o'clock next morning to catch the mail to
+Calais, and Paul was able to leave Annette without severe misgiving.
+Laurent had promised to look after her, and the improvement in her own
+hopes appeared so manifest that he felt safe about her, except for those
+slight inevitable uneasinesses which occur at such a time. But he
+was only to be away for a month at the outside, and he had Laurent's
+assurance that he might make his mind easy. Annette herself rose to see
+Paul away, in spite of his remonstrances. She nestled by him whilst he
+stood to drink his coffee in the gray dawn of the morning, in the great,
+empty, echoing _salle a manger_, with Darco rolling about the house
+like an exaggerated football impelled by unseen influences, and roaring
+tempestuous orders like a ship's captain in a squall.
+
+Never in his life had Paul felt so wholly tender as he did then towards
+Annette. He had begun to read so many new meanings into her of late. She
+seemed no longer the molluscous little creature he had once thought her,
+but a woman, capable of much suffering, of some determination, of real
+affection. He was leaving her at the very time at which she most needed
+his guardianship and care, and at the hour, too, when she seemed first
+really to confide in him and cling to him. His eyes were moist when he
+held her in a last embrace, and ran into the street in answer to Darco's
+final call. His collaborateur was already seated in the voiture, glossy
+silk hat, astrachan cuffs and collar, gold-rimmed eyeglass, and all The
+_cocker's_ whip cracked stormily, and the fat Flemish horse started off
+at a pace of four miles an hour.
+
+'Mark my vorts,' said Darco, as they rolled along the country road
+towards the station at which they were to intercept the northward
+travelling Malle des Indes, 'you are dravelling to vame ant vorchune.'
+
+'Well,'said Paul, 'that's pleasant to know, isn't it, old Darco?'
+
+'It is very bleasant,' returned Darco. 'You ant I are an iteal gouple.
+We fit each other like the two halves of a pear. I am a boet. Do you
+hear me, younk Armstronk? I am a boet I am a berson of imachination.
+I can invent. I can gontrive. There is nopoty in the vorlt who can
+gonstruct a blot like me. But I gannot egspress myself. Now, you gan
+egspress me; that is your desdiny. You will egspress Cheorge Dargo. You
+will descend to future aitches as the dranslader of Cheorge Dargo.'
+
+'It is a happy lot, old chap,' said Paul, 'and I am so proud of it that
+I am going to sleep.'
+
+'Lacy tewle!' said Darco, 'give me the script. I haf been thinking of
+somethings.'
+
+How Darco worked, stormed, domineered in the ensuing month, nobody
+outside the limits of the Congreve knew. He appalled the timid and
+maddened the courageous. He was up all night for half a week together,
+seeming to live with a teaspoon in one hand and a tin of some nutritive
+meat essence in the other, and always administering doses to himself as
+if he were a patient in danger of imminent exhaustion.
+
+Mr. Warr was here, under solemn articles not once to varnish the work of
+art until the run of the piece was over.
+
+'A dreadful circumstance, truly, Mr. Armstrong,' he complained. 'I am
+deprived of the consolation of one device which has hitherto upheld me
+at such times of trial. The piece might run, sir, for a year; it might
+even run for two. There is no looking forward to a definite date of
+relief, sir. It is like being imprisoned at Her Majesty's pleasure. A
+painful prospect, Mr. Armstrong---a period of unassuaged incertitude,
+sir.' Daroo burst down upon him like a stormy wind.
+
+'Don't stand jattering there. Co ant do somethings.'
+
+'I have nothing at this moment which calls for my attention, I do assure
+you, Mr. Darco.'
+
+'Then find somethings. There is always blenty for efery-boty to do about
+a theadre.'
+
+Mr. Warr drifted before the storm, and found a harbour in the
+painting-room, whence he was blasted five minutes later half shipwrecked
+and wholly demoralized. But Darco was a general who could spare his
+forces, and three days before the play was announced for production he
+addressed his army:
+
+'Laties and chentlemen, I nefer pelieve in worrying peoples. You haf all
+done noply. Tomorrow there will be no call. Next day at eleven sharp,
+eferything as at the broduction. Then it will debend upon yourselves
+whether you are galled upon to rehearse again or no.'
+
+With this all engaged dispersed well pleased, and Darco announced his
+intention of dining and going to bed. He ordered dinner for two, and ate
+his double portion through seven courses, after which he went tranquilly
+home to his hotel and slept the clock round.
+
+The rehearsal next day was so completely satisfactory that he was
+content to leave it on its merits, and on the following evening the
+first production of the new management at the Congreve went with a roar
+of triumph. There was no mistaking the verdict of the house, and the
+Press was as emphatic as the first night's audience.
+
+'Vod did I dell you?' Darco asked. 'Vame and vorchune are at your veed.
+It vos a luggy day for us to meet. Vot? Not? I am Cheorge Darga!'
+
+Paul was tired, excited, and elated all at once. He had promised to
+start for Belgium so soon as the verdict of the public was made clear,
+but he could afford to snatch the journey down to Castle Barfield, and
+to get a glimpse of the old father. He slept on the journey, and took
+the last five miles by cab. Armstrong was in his accustomed place
+amongst the dusty and neglected stock when Paul broke in upon him,
+somewhat grayer than ever, a little more bent, perhaps, but with just
+the old look of wise patience in his face, the shaggy eyebrows fringing
+just the old quiet twinkle in his eyes. He declined to express the least
+atom of surprise.
+
+'It's you, Paul, is it?' he asked tranquilly, rising to shake hands.
+'You've had a grand success, I'm learning. I read the notice in the
+_Times_.'
+
+'The play's all right,' said Paul. 'And how's all here?'
+
+'Oh,' said his father, 'we have our dwallin' in the middle parts of
+fortune. We're neither uplifted nor cast down. Come in, lad. Well all be
+glad to see ye.'
+
+The old place was exactly as it always had been in his memory, and
+yet it was all shrunken and narrowed, and had grown meaner and more
+poverty-stricken than it had used to seem.
+
+He settled down in his old place by the fireside, lit his pipe, listened
+to the local annals, and prepared to be questioned with respect to his
+own prospects and affairs.
+
+'You'll be growing pretty well to do, Paul?' said Armstrong.
+
+'Well, yes,' said Paul, feeling at a pocket-book which lay at the right
+side of his tweed coat. 'I'm getting pretty well-to-do.'
+
+'Yell be getting married one of these fine days?' his father asked,
+twinkling dryly at him.
+
+'Well, the fact is, sir,' Paul answered in some embarrassment, 'I am
+married.'
+
+'Holy Paul!' said Armstrong, and dropped his pipe upon the patchwork
+rug. Paul stooped for it to cover his own confusion.
+
+'Yes,' he said hurriedly, 'I am married. And I felt such a beast for not
+having written to tell you all about it that I made up my mind to be
+my own messenger. The truth is it was all rather hurried, and
+unexpected--in a way. There had been an attachment for some time, but
+there was no immediate thought of marriage, and Annette--that is my
+wife's name--Annette fell ill, and was not expected to recover, and it
+was really, to both our minds, a sort of death-bed ceremony, and now she
+is quite recovered.'
+
+There was such a sense of awkwardness upon him that he boggled the
+simple story altogether. There was no amazement in his mind at all when
+his father spoke next. He could have foretold his words.
+
+'Man, 'said Armstrong, 'had ye led the gyirl astray?'
+
+He had never meant to lie about the matter, but at this point-blank
+thrust he lied.
+
+'My dear old dad!' he said, 'what _are_ you thinking of?'
+
+'I beg your pardon, Paul,' said Armstrong--'I beg your pardon.'
+
+They seemed at once to have a gulf between them, though the simple,
+honest elder, who had probably never lied in the whole course of his
+life, did not perceive it. Before Paul it gaped unbridgable.
+
+'She's a dear, good little creature,' Paul boggled along, with a
+disastrous facility of words which had no guidance. 'She's French by
+descent, but she speaks very good English--very fair English. I taught
+her. I'll bring her down to see you. We're living in Belgium at present,
+at a little place called Montcourtois, a charming little place. She
+likes the quiet of it, and it's very favourable for work. If one lives
+in town there are so many calls upon one's time. You can't get really
+settled down to the development of an idea, you know.'
+
+'Ay,' said Armstrong, 'I can imagine that. But, Paul, lad, I could have
+wished ye'd written.'
+
+'Don't make it harder than it is, sir,' Paul appealed. 'I ought to have
+written. I'm very sorry that I didn't, and I've come down purposely to
+explain it all.'
+
+'Well,' said his father, 'better late than never. What kind is she like,
+lad?'
+
+'Well,' said Paul, 'you can't expect a man to describe the girl he's in
+love with so as to satisfy anybody else She's slight and not very tall;
+she has brown hair and brown eyes; she has a very pretty voice, and very
+dainty ways.'
+
+'Ay, ay, lad!' said Armstrong; 'but her soul--her intelligence?'
+
+'She's bright and clever,' Paul cried, rather protestingly. 'She takes a
+keen interest in my work. We're dearly attached to each other, and I am
+looking forward to a happy life.'
+
+'What like are her people?' Armstrong asked.
+
+'Well, I don't know a great deal about her people. She's an orphan. She
+has an elder sister, and an aunt and an uncle or two.'
+
+'She'll be a Catholic, will she?'
+
+'No,' said Paul; 'her family is Huguenot. I think I should rather have
+shrunk from marrying a Catholic. There's a sort of prejudice of which it
+isn't easy to free the mind.'
+
+He was sinking clean out of sight of his own esteem; but it was his sole
+business for the time being to save his father as far as possible, and
+he had grown reckless of himself.
+
+'She shall come to see you,' he went on, 'and you wont be able to help
+making friends with her. I've to be back in Montcourtois to-morrow
+night, or she'll be worrying her life out. That means I must catch the
+one o'clock express for town, and that, again, means that I've only four
+hours to spend at home this time.'
+
+'Ye'll have a glass of whisky, Paul?'
+
+'I will, sir,' Paul answered, 'with all the pleasure in life.'
+
+So Armstrong went to the cupboard and brought out a bottle and the sugar
+basin, and set the kettle on the fire, and then sat down and loaded up
+his pipe in silence.
+
+'There's much I'd like to say, Paul,' he began at length.
+
+There was nothing in the act which could have moved a stranger to
+anything but a smile at the oddity of it, but it touched Paul almost to
+tears when the gray old man lugged out of his coat-tail pocket a whole
+newspaper, and having pinched from it a most economical fragment, singed
+his fingers at the bars in the act of lighting it. He had laughed at
+that little quaintness a hundred times as a lad, and it was somehow the
+first thing that had come home to him as a real reminder to be in want
+of reformation.'
+
+They grew more at ease. Armstrong took up the subject he had broken a
+few minutes earlier.
+
+'I don't guess,' he said, 'whether you're believe these thoughts for
+yourself, but there's a gap between you and me, Paul. Ye've had grave
+troubles.
+
+'I have, sir,' said Paul.
+
+'I've known it,' said his father. 'I've thoughts in my mind when ye're
+away: "Paul's blythe," or I thenk of ye, lad; I sit here in the auld
+arm-chair and think of ye, and eh, man, I'm just as certain of myself
+as if I were aware of every fact in your existence. Promise me this. I'm
+wearing we meet this last time for ever, and I want ye to keep the auld
+feelings from time to time. Write a little more regularly, about ye.
+Take me into confidence when ye're gone.
+
+Paul promised, and all the estrangement seemed to melt away. This was to
+be their last meeting, both or them guessed it, and when at last it
+grew to the time Paul must go, the father went down the long hall the
+front-door. Paul fumbled for the pocket-book in the darkness of the
+passage found a piece of paper, and kissed the old man at parting he
+thrust this into his hand.
+
+Arrived at the station nearest to Montcourtois; then the voiture from
+the hotel with the grinning Victor on the box, and Laurent waiting.
+
+'No bad news' asked Paul.
+
+'Things are not quite what they might be or what they should be,'
+Laurent answered. 'But get in, and we will talk as we drive. Do you
+remember,' he asked, whilst Victor filled the night with the noise of a
+fusillade of whip-crackings--'do you remember that I told, you some time
+ago that a man should have no secrets from his physician?
+
+'Yes,' said Paul. 'Well?'
+
+'Have you had any secrets from me in respect to Madame Armstrong?'
+
+'No; nothing that I can think of. I don't quite see what you are driving
+at.'
+
+'Do you remember,' Laurent asked, 'the evening on which you first
+called me to attend her--the night on which she cried out that they were
+dancing in the wood, and that their bones were white? Do you remember?'
+
+'Good God!' cried Paul; 'do I remember?'
+
+'Did you ever diagnose that case? the doctor asked.
+
+'No. Do you mean to say that her mind is affected, that----
+
+'You never guessed?' asked Laurent, leaning across to him and grasping
+him by the arm--'you never guessed? Upon your life and honour?'
+
+'Guessed? Guessed what?'
+
+'Now,' said Laurent, 'I am going to hurt you, and I cannot help it. I am
+sorry, but it must be.'
+
+'Speak out, man!' gasped Paul--'speak out!'
+
+'That,' said Laurent, 'was delirium tremens.'
+
+They had three miles to travel, and not another word was spoken on the
+road; but as they passed the doctor's house a voice called out to him,
+and the driver pulled up.
+
+'Stay with me a moment, Mr. Armstrong,' said Laurent 'I will but give
+this man an ordonnance for the pharmacien, and I will be with you. Drive
+home, Victor!'
+
+The carriage rattled off; the doctor, the messenger, and Paul stood at
+the kerb for a minute or so. The carriage rumbled into the distance; a
+window was heard to open and to dose. Laurent took Paul's arm, and they
+walked together without a word until they came in front of the window
+of the room which Paul had used as a study. The blind was up, a lamp was
+lit, and the whole room was visible from the roadway.
+
+'Mon Dieu!' said Laurent in a whisper.
+
+Annette was there in her nightdress, looking from side to side like
+a hunted creature. A decanter stood upon the table. She approached it
+crouching, seized it with one hand, took a tumbler in the other, and
+three times poured and three times drank as if the draught were water;
+then she glided away and closed the door behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+For any and every episode of his life save this, Paul, when he chose to
+think about it, could make a fairly expressive picture in his mind, and
+could bring back something of the emotion of the time. Here he could
+remember only that Laurent clutched him by the arm, and that he turned
+on Laurent with something of the vague appeal for aid which might be
+imagined in the mind of a frightened child. He saw that a thousand signs
+which he should have recognised had escaped him, and in the flush of
+real apprehension which followed this thought he seemed to himself to
+have been almost wilfully blind to the truth. There were so many things
+which might have guided him, and he had taken warning by none of them.
+
+'I beg your pardon, old chap,' he said to Laurent, speaking
+unconsciously in English, 'but I'm a little bit upset. You would not
+mind lending me your arm inside?'
+
+'Assuredly not,' cried Laurent, still supporting him; and the two men
+entered the hotel together.
+
+The Solitary still remembered how his clumsy footsteps seemed to fumble
+at the stone stairs, and the very pressure of Laurent's arm upon his
+own shoulder was still a living sensation with him; yet for the actual
+moment thought and sensation alike seemed to have been abolished.
+Laurent, when the study had once been reached, helped Paul into a chair,
+and stood over him with a look of friendly solicitude.
+
+'A little stimulant, I think,' he said at last, in a tone of
+commonplace, and set a hand on the decanter which Annette had so
+recently laid down.
+
+'Not that, Laurent!' cried Paul, with a gesture the other was swift to
+interpret.
+
+The doctor left the room with a meaningless, friendly tap on Paul's
+shoulder, and came back a few instants later with a bottle of brandy.
+
+'I insist,' he said commandingly, in answer to Paul's rejecting wave of
+the hand.
+
+When Laurent insisted there were few people who said him nay, and Paul
+took the potion which was poured out for him.
+
+He could remember it all, from this point onward, as if he had been a
+mere disinterested spectator of the scene. He could see his own figure
+straightening itself mechanically in the chair in which it sat. He could
+see himself mechanically throwing one leg over another, and assuming an
+attitude of indifference and ease. He could see himself distinctly in
+the act of knocking out the ashes of his pipe upon the grate; in the
+refilling and lighting of it; in the numberless little gestures which
+seemed to indicate an entire possession of himself And all the while
+something was booming in his mind as if the word 'lost 'were only half
+articulated there--a scarcely uttered word that carried doom with it.
+
+'I do not know,' said Laurent, speaking, for a man of his experience
+and authority, rather brokenly--'I do not know whether it was my duty to
+have spoken earlier. I have not known you very long; but we have learned
+to like each other, and I would have done you the service to tell you
+what I knew a month or two ago if I could have found the courage. But I
+will ask you to believe that I was much perplexed, and that I could not
+resolve in my own mind whether or not you knew already. It would have
+seemed a cruel thing to intrude upon such a secret.'
+
+'Yes,' said Paul, breaking silence for the first time since he had
+entered the house, 'I understand that' He pulled gravely at his pipe,
+and sipped again at the glass Laurent had poured out for him. 'What's
+going to be done?' he asked; and then, with a sudden petulance, 'What
+have I got to do?'
+
+'In a patient so young,' said Laurent, 'unless there is some hereditary
+taint to combat, there should be no impossibility in establishing a
+cure. What of Madame Armstrong's heredity?' What did Paul know of Madame
+Armstrong's heredity? Save for a casual glimpse of her sister, who had
+seemed to him as commonplace as candle-light, he had no knowledge of any
+person of her name or family. He sat silent, not knowing how to express
+his ignorance without compromising Annette and himself. But Laurent
+pressed him.
+
+'Do you know of anything,' he asked, 'which should make the task of cure
+difficult?'And, being thus pressed, there seemed nothing for it but for
+Paul to say that he knew nothing. 'Then,' said Laurent, 'we must not
+despair. I have already spoken to your wife, and have pointed out to
+her the very serious nature of her danger, and she has promised me
+amendment. With what result,' he added, throwing his arms abroad, 'you
+see.'
+
+'You think it a serious danger? Paul asked him.
+
+'My God!' ejaculated Laurent--'serious! But an instant, my dear
+Armstrong. We are not thinking of a male inebriate; we are thinking of a
+woman--a question so different that there is barely any comparison to be
+made.'
+
+'Is that so? said Paul, in a voice of little interest, though he felt
+for the moment as if his heart were breaking.
+
+'That is so,' returned Laurent, with emphasis; 'and I can assure you
+that, if you desire to effect a cure here, you must betake yourself--and
+betake yourself at once--to heroic measures. Your wife must be placed,
+without delay, in competent hands, and no restraint must be placed upon
+those who undertake to treat her.'
+
+'Very well,' said Paul dully, 'I understand all that We'll have another
+talk in the morning, if you don't mind.'
+
+Laurent forbore to speak further just then, but he kept Paul in silent
+company for an hour, and was more useful in that way than he could have
+been if he had poured out the gathered knowledge of an encyclopaedia
+upon him. He gave that dumb sense of sympathy which, in hours of deep
+distress, is so very much more potent than the spoken word. Paul at last
+rose and shook him by the hand.
+
+'Good-night,' he said, 'and thank you.'
+
+Laurent accepted his dismissal, returned the grip, took up his hat
+and moved away. It would appear that he had not gone far, for when an
+instant later Paul poured out a second or third glass of cognac for
+himself, there came a tap upon the study window, and Laurent's face was
+visible there dose to one of the lower panes. Paul threw the window open
+and looked out at him.
+
+'You have something to say?' he asked.
+
+'Yes,' said Laurent, with a grave and tender face, 'I have this one
+thing to say: Do not follow that sorrowful example.'
+
+'Oh,' said Paul, 'have no fear there; my temptation does not lie in that
+direction.'
+
+'My dear young friend,' said Laurent, 'no man until he is tempted knows
+in what direction his temptation lies.'
+
+They shook hands again through the open window and then parted
+definitely for the night.
+
+Paul sat long in the silence, not thinking of anything in particular or
+conscious of any particular emotion. The cafe on the opposite side of
+the _place_ had long since closed. When Laurent's footsteps had faded
+out of hearing there was no sound abroad for which it was not necessary
+to listen, except when a distant dog barked now and then, or the slow
+rumble of a far-off train came once into hearing and disappeared in the
+valley with which the railway clove the low hills beyond Janenne. The
+dark air of night flowed in through the open window, cool and sweet,
+bringing with it the familiar odours of the pine plantations in which
+the countryside abounded. Paul smoked pipe after pipe, and he knew very
+well that if anybody had been there to look at him, he would have seemed
+unmoved, and yet he seemed to himself more than once to be playing the
+mountebank with his own trouble, as when, for instance, the lines came
+into his mind:
+
+     'Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
+     That grief has shaken into frost'
+
+But all the while there was a slow anguish rising within him or around
+him. It seemed to reach his breast quite suddenly and almost to stop
+the beating of his heart. Then it ebbed away again, and he found himself
+crooning unemotionally, 'For years--a measureless ill--for ever, for
+ever!' The pain came back, and once more ebbed away. What was it? he
+asked in the self-torturing way which besets the analyst of his own
+nature. Self-pity, he answered. Self-pity, pure and simple. He, Paul
+Armstrong, furnished with heart and brains and social powers, with
+fortune at hand, and fame to be had for the beckoning, had slid into
+this sickening quagmire thus early in his life's pilgrimage, and had
+come to an arrest there.
+
+Then, out of this profound despondency he arose to a sudden resolution.
+This was not a matter to be despaired of. It was a thing to fight
+against, an ill not to be endured, but to be cured. Laurent would help,
+but the main share of the conflict must fall upon himself. Almost for
+the first time in his life he was conscious of a clear and definite call
+to manhood. He was entered for a real strife with Fate--a fight to a
+finish. Well, he would not shrink from it He set himself to ask
+what weapons he could use. Patience, tact, determination, sleepless
+vigilance--they all seemed as if they were to be had for the asking. He
+resolved upon them all, and so, having closed the window and put out the
+lamp, he walked heavily up to bed.
+
+Annette's doors were locked, both that which gave upon the corridor and
+that which communicated with his own little room. He could but remember
+how often they had been closed before, and what varying reasons he had
+been forced to seek and find for her isolation of herself. That riddle
+was read now. There would be a stormy scene in the morning when he came
+to tell Annette that he had solved it, and thinking of how he should
+face it, and of what means were the likeliest to lead to ultimate
+victory, he lost something of the sickness of his pain. He undressed and
+lay down in the dark, but there was no sleep for him until long after
+the window-blind had grown amber-tinted with the gleam of the level sun
+upon it.
+
+When he awoke his watch told him that it was near ten o'clock. He rang
+for his bath, dressed, breakfasted, met the people of the house, and
+answered their friendly inquiries as to his journey all pretty much as
+if nothing had occurred to change the whole horizon of his life. He made
+no inquiries as to Annette, and no news came to him with regard to her.
+
+It was near noonday when Laurent came into his study, very grave and
+gray, and looking as if he, too, had had a night of severe trouble.
+Paul read the sympathy in his face, and rose to meet him. The two shook
+hands, and from that moment there was a real friendship between them.
+'You have seen her? Laurent asked.
+
+'Not yet,' said Paul
+
+'You have thought over what I was compelled to tell you--what you saw?'
+
+'Yes; I have thought it all over.
+
+'And your conclusions?'
+
+'To ask the aid of your experience, and to abide by your advice.'
+
+'Thank you,' said Laurent gravely. 'I, too, have been thinking, and
+perhaps, in my judgment, it may be better that I should first see her
+alone. In my capacity of physician I can speak impersonally.'
+
+'I am in your hands,' Paul answered, 'and I shall accede to whatever you
+think is best.'
+
+'Well,' returned Laurent, with a gray smile, 'I do not commonly advocate
+eavesdropping, but I think perhaps it may be as well for you to hear our
+talk together. It will guide you as to what you may say or do hereafter.
+I will send up my name now, and when I am admitted you may follow to
+your own small room. Is that espionage? I do not very greatly care
+myself, for I shall warn her from the first that I shall faithfully
+report every spoken word so far as I can remember it.'
+
+'I will come,' said Paul. 'I have the right And the more I know the
+better I can use it.'
+
+Laurent twirled the milled button of the call-bell which stood upon the
+desk.
+
+'My respects to Madame Armstrong,' he said, when the landlady's
+middle-aged daughter came in and smoothed her apron as a sign of respect
+to Monsieur le Medecin. 'I am a few moments late, but I am here to keep
+my appointment.'
+
+Out went Mademoiselle Adele, and her slippered footsteps faded up the
+staircase. There was a sound of knocking, a conversation inaudible to
+the two who strained their ears to listen, and then mademoiselle was
+back again.
+
+Madame was _malade--bien malade_--would beg Monsieur le Medecin to
+excuse her.
+
+'Then I will try,' said Laurent 'I have your authority?'
+
+'Absolutely,' said Paul, and the doctor went creaking up the stairs in
+his heavy, country-made boots.
+
+Paul sat alone again and listened with his heart in his ears.
+
+A series of raps sounded upon the door above, at first quiet and
+persuasive, and then increasing in intensity. There came a faint sound
+of protesting inquiry, and in answer:
+
+'Dr. Laurent, s'il vous plait, madame.'
+
+There was another protest, and Laurent spoke again:
+
+'But I am here by appointment, madame, and I cannot afford to waste my
+time.'
+
+And just here a curious and rather embarrassing thing happened, for the
+doctor, laying a nervous hand upon the door, found it suddenly opened to
+him with no symptom of resistance.
+
+'A thousand pardons!' he exclaimed. 'Pray tell me when you are ready.'
+
+Annette was at the door like a wild cat, but the square-built toe of
+Laurent's foot was between it and the jamb. Paul raced up the stairs
+in his stocking-feet, his boots in his hand. This was not a time for
+delicacies of sentiment He wished to save Annette. He wished even more
+to save himself from the misery of a lifelong degradation. He darted
+into his own room whilst Laurent was still standing like a statue at the
+door of the adjoining chamber, but reached it barely in time, for on a
+sudden the door of Annette's apartment was thrown open, and a voice of
+imperious sarcasm demanded to know to what Madame Armstrong was indebted
+for this unexpected honour.
+
+'It will be well,' said Laurent in his professional tone, 'for Madame
+Armstrong to return to bed.'
+
+He turned the key in the door, and at this Annette sent out shriek on
+shriek, until the whole corridor seemed to shrill with the outcry.
+
+'Madame,' said Laurent in his deep nasal voice, when the clamour died
+down for a moment, 'your husband is in the house. He is within hearing.
+I have his entire authority to speak to you, and I am intent to use it I
+am here to tell you that you have abused his absence and his confidence,
+and that on his arrival at Janenne last night I told him the result of
+my observations during the last four or five weeks.'
+
+Paul, boots in hand, sat on the edge of his own bed, and heard a kind of
+gasping noise. Then for a moment there was silence until Laurent spoke
+again.
+
+'If you will permit, madame,' he said, 'this interview may go smoothly.
+If you choose to be angry, that is your affair. I am authorized by your
+husband, as your physician, to speak plain truths to you. You need not
+trouble to deny me, but I see you have already been drinking.'
+
+'How dare you!' she flashed out, and Paul heard the stamp of her little
+naked foot upon the fox-skin rug which lay beside their bed.
+
+'Madame,' said Laurent, 'there is no question of daring or not daring. I
+have told your husband everything, and he is sitting in the next room at
+this moment, and hears every word we speak.'
+
+'Paul!' she cried, 'Paul is here? Why hasn't he been to see me? Why has
+he no word for me?'
+
+'Madame,' said Laurent sternly, 'I bid you cease these theatrical
+pretences. Your unhappy husband saw you last night when you three times
+seized the decanter which had been left for him.'
+
+She gasped: 'You liar!'
+
+'That is all very well, madame,' responded Laurent, 'but my eyes are
+mine, and I have known the truth for months past. Why do you venture on
+a hope so vain? Now, I will tell you plainly, Madame Armstrong, you
+are going on the way to hell. You are to be stopped, and you shall be
+stopped. Pray make no mistake as to the authority that is to be exerted.
+It shall be exerted as mildly as you permit. It shall be exerted as
+inexorably as the necessities of the case demand I have told you already
+many times into what a pitfall you were descending, but until last night
+I never dared to warn your husband. He knows the truth now, knows
+it all, and he leaves you in my hands. You have not heeded advice or
+beseeching, and--I say it, believe me, with deep reluctance--we must
+draw a cordon about you, and protect you from yourself. Pray understand,
+madame, it is a protective cordon only, and your own action may relax it
+at any time; but your actions will be watched, as it is my duty to tell
+you, to the extremest scruple.'
+
+'What do you mean to do? Paul heard her ask in a husky, panting voice,
+which made him figure in his own mind a hunted creature almost run to
+ground.
+
+'Nothing more,' Laurent replied, 'nothing more, madame, believe
+me--nothing more than is dictated by the necessities of the case. You
+have an ordonnance dating from Paris.
+
+I have instructed the pharmacien that he is no longer to respect it.'
+
+Annette whined at this like a child robbed of a toy.
+
+'I have forbidden him this morning,' Laurent pursued, 'to supply you,
+without my special direction, with any drug whatever, and I have given
+him particular orders about the eau'des Carmes. I am now about to tell
+the hotel people that you are under my care and treatment, and that you
+will be allowed only a measured quantity of wine per diem.'
+
+'You mean to expose me to them?' Annette asked
+
+'I do not propose to expose madame to anybody,' Laurent responded, 'but
+if madame chooses to expose herself----'
+
+The listener could imagine the shrug of the broad shoulders and the
+outward cast of the persuasive hands.
+
+'Voyons, madame,' pursued the doctor, 'we wish nothing but your good,
+but that we are determined to accomplish. I have nothing to add to what
+I have said already, and perhaps it is time that you should see your
+husband.'
+
+Paul hastily thrust his feet into his slippers, and awaited the opening
+of the door.
+
+'He is there,' said Laurent; 'he has probably listened to every word we
+have spoken.'
+
+Paul sat trembling on the bed-edge. The imminent interview disturbed him
+strangely, and set all manner of conflicting tides flowing in heart and
+brain. He was part coward and part hero; ready to face everything and
+to run away from everything. His pity for Annette was pity, and no more;
+his sympathy for Paul Armstrong amounted to a passion. He strove to
+bring himself to what he conceived to be a more fitting mood, but whilst
+he struggled with himself the inner door of the room in which he sat
+was suddenly torn open, and Annette stood before him. He could not have
+believed, without that actual visual revelation, that such a wreck
+could have been achieved in so small a space of time. Whatever of
+spirituality, whatever of youthful foolish _espieglerie_ the face had
+held, had vanished. The visage was like a mask--and a mask of death.
+There was a splash of purplish crimson beneath either eyelid, but for
+the rest the face was of the yellow of a week-old bone; the eyelids
+were puffy, and the lips were lax. The whole face quivered like a shaken
+jelly as she looked at him.
+
+'Paul,' she said--' Paul, Paul!'
+
+And with that she cast herself upon his breast in a very storm of tears.
+
+For a moment he stood helpless and confused, and then a sudden flux of
+pity came upon him, and he held her steadily and firmly in answer to the
+hysteric grip with which her arms encircled him, now tightening and now
+relaxing. She fawned upon him piteously from the very beginning of this
+embrace, and at the last she fell, both knees thudding upon the carpet,
+and abased her head between his ankles, crying bitterly the while. And
+at this whatever manhood was within the man fled for the time being, and
+he, kneeling to raise her from her self-abasement, also lifted up his
+voice and wept bitterly.
+
+Before things had quite reached this melancholy pass Laurent had stolen
+from the room, and had closed both doors behind him, so that husband and
+wife were alone.
+
+'Dearest,' said Paul, 'what can I do to help you?'
+
+The word was not wholly sincere, but it held more than the average ounce
+of sincerity to the ton which keeps human speech a possibility. At least
+his desire was to help her, if it were only a way of helping himself.
+But the whole thing was so miserable that to analyze emotions at such
+a moment was surely to mount the very Appenines of folly. Annette cried
+and cried, with her yet young and supple figure clinging to him, and, in
+spite of the debauched, melancholy face, what could he do but stroke her
+hair and kiss her cheek, and promise kindness and encouragement? Most
+of the time he was inwardly murmuring, 'Poor devil!' and was assuring
+himself that he had taken up a most hopeless handful; but the whole
+wretched tangle of feeling was too intricate to be unravelled by so
+much as a straight inch. What could he do? He asked the question
+despairingly; he asked it in genuine pity of Annette; he asked it in a
+yet more genuine pity of himself. The man who deals professionally with
+the emotions of other people cannot preserve the simplicity of his own;
+it would be out of nature to believe it.
+
+There was a reconciliation of a sort, but it could hardly be very real
+at first, and to give it any aspect of permanence time was necessary.
+
+Laurent and Paul concocted a plan of campaign. It was essential in
+the doctor's opinion to avoid as far as possible all open evidence
+of watchfulness, and yet to know very accurately what was being done.
+Innumerable attempts were made to break the cordon of guardianship
+which was drawn around Annette. She feigned, of course, as people in
+her position always feign, to acquiesce entirely in the means which were
+adopted to guard her from herself, but there were eternal skirmishes
+between the outlying posts of the two armies which came in a very short
+time to be established. In that newfound prosperity of his Paul had
+grown absolutely careless about money, and he had not the faintest idea
+as to the extent of his wife's supplies. That she had enough, for
+the time being, to corrupt quite a small regiment was speedily made
+manifest, and a silent contest, in which the victor acknowledged victory
+no more than the vanquished admitted defeat, set in. How wide the
+ramifications of this strange war might be Paul could not guess, but on
+occasion some circumstance would reveal that they had reached unexpected
+distances. It was a perfectly understood thing in the hotel itself that
+no supplies of wine or of more potent liquor were to be supplied at
+Madame Armstrong's order. The village pharmacien sold nothing to her
+without Laurent's consent, but there were ways and means of one sort or
+another by which she contrived to procure her poison, and at such times
+the old signs were always perceptible: the passion for solitude,
+the tricksy, changing spirit which varied from extravagant mirth
+to unreasonable anger. Laurent watched the contest with a sleepless
+loyalty, and Annette, finding herself foiled by him a thousand times
+oftener than by the less vigilant Paul, grew to hate him. But in spite
+of all the unfortunate creature could do to accelerate her own ruin,
+she grew slowly back to health, and to something more than her original
+personal attractiveness. For a kind of experience was marked upon her,
+and the indefinable yet universally recognised expression which betokens
+this was present in her looks. When watchfulness prevailed over the
+strange craft which was brought into conflict with it, Annette knew how
+to be charming, even to the man who suffered so much at her hands; but
+when the contrabandists succeeded in running in their supplies there
+were hours of horror--scenes in which rage and accusation were succeeded
+by storms of tears and tempestuous self-reproach. On one such occasion
+Paul sat in his study, for the moment oblivious of the world. His
+dissipation and his best relief from the cares which beset him was
+labour, and he laboured hard. It was his fashion at this time to stand
+at his desk--a rude thing built for him by the village carpenter--and in
+the pauses which came in between his actual spells of writing, to stride
+about his limited territory, enacting the scenes he was striving to
+portray, and shaping his sentences in such an impassioned undertone as
+an actor will employ in the study of a part. He was at the limit of
+his walk from the window, thus engaged, when the door was violently and
+without warning broken open in such fashion that its edge struck him on
+the face. Here was Annette, blazing with some newly-discovered injury,
+and Paul at once recognised the ancient and too-well-remembered
+symptoms. The contrabandists had got through again, and this time with
+a vengeance. When he could gather his scattered wits--the blow in itself
+had been a shrewd thing--he found that he was being stormily assailed in
+respect of an amour with the cook of the Hotel of the Three Friends, a
+highly respectable person of fifty summers and a waist of sixty inches
+in circumference. He closed the door, and, mopping his injured nose,
+invited Annette to a seat.
+
+'Talk lower, dear,' he asked her. 'It shall be perfectly understood
+between us that I deserve all your reproaches, but don't give the poor,
+dear old cook away, or, if you must assail her, speak in English.'
+
+'That is your ring,' said Annette. She drew her wedding-ring from her
+finger and cast it to the floor. 'I have done with you for ever; you are
+a traitor and a villain.'
+
+Paul stooped for the ring as it rolled to his feet, and bestowed it in
+his pocket.
+
+'You and Laurent,' cried Annette, 'have conspired to kill me. Oh, I know
+you both! but if there is justice in earth or heaven, I will have it Do
+not think because I am a woman and alone that I can find no protector. I
+am not so helpless as you fancy.'
+
+'I am very busy, dear,' Paul answered in a cold desperation, 'and we
+might discuss these important questions at another moment.'
+
+'Oh,' cried Annette, 'anything to avoid the truth!'
+
+'Yes,' said Paul, with the first flush of anger he had permitted
+himself, 'anything to avoid the truth--anything, or almost anything; but
+if you stay here one other moment I will avoid the truth no longer.'
+
+He cast the door wide open, and Annette with an amazing submissiveness
+passed through it.
+
+It was long past mid-autumn by this time, and was indeed fast drawing
+on towards winter, so that in the little study a fire was lit in the
+earlier hours of the day to air the room. It had been lighted that
+morning, and the first true nip of winter was in the air. Paul sat alone
+with his head between his hands until a violent shiver aroused him from
+his thoughts. The air was growing dark as well as chilly; a pale yellow
+light gleamed already from the windows of the Cafe de la Regence across
+the _place_, and the outlook was as chilly as the air, as comfortless as
+the thoughts which filled his mind.
+
+'Hands up,' said Paul to himself; 'hands up and sink down into the waste
+waters, and have done with it.'
+
+Of what act of desperation he would have been guilty in this mood he
+could never have told, but at this instant the door was opened very
+softly, and Annette was back again. She had been somewhat dishevelled
+at her last appearance, and carelessly attired. She had now, to all
+seeming, called in the aid of the solitary coiffeur of the village, and
+her pretty brown locks were done up in lustrous coils. She was attired
+in a charming little dressing-gown of pale-blue, with lace at the wrists
+and throat, and her complexion had been somewhat rudely brightened by a
+touch of red upon the cheeks. She closed the door softly behind her, and
+advanced with pleading hands.
+
+'Paul dear,' she said, 'I do not know if ever you can forgive me, but I
+think you would, perhaps, if you knew the real truth about me. Oh, Paul,
+Paul, Paul, I am afraid--I am afraid that I am going mad! I have no
+self-control. I say cruel and wicked things without believing them, and
+I cannot help it There is a devil in my soul who tempts me. What is a
+poor little girl like me to do against the devil? Won't you help me,
+Paul dear? Give me back my ring; I never meant to throw it away. There
+is nothing I value so much in the world. Give it back to me, Paul.
+There; put it on my finger. God bless you for ever, you dearest,
+dearest, kindest, patient dear! And now, Paul, take me in your arms as
+you used to do. Kiss me, and tell me that you love me. I'm only a little
+creature, Paul, when everything's said and done; I'm five feet three,
+English measure, and how can _I_ be expected to fight a devil! Kiss me,
+kiss me again, Paul.'
+
+She thrust him back with rage, tore the ring once more from her finger,
+and cast it again upon the floor. Then, with an air of comedy disdain,
+'It is really too cheap a thing to fool a fool like you.' And so, with a
+shrill peal of stagey laughter, she curtseyed low to him and glided from
+the room.
+
+He stood with clenched hands for a single instant, and--how he never
+knew--came to a sudden calm. He took up his hat from the desk on which
+he had thrown it on entering the room, and sauntered out to the front
+of the hotel in a complete vacancy of thought and emotion; and as he
+lounged there, thinking of nothing and caring for nothing, there was
+woven into the woof of life the next thread of his destiny, for who
+should drive up to the main door of the Three Friends, with her maid and
+her luggage, and all the airs and impertinences of a person of fashion,
+but La Femme Incomprise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+And who should be La Femme Incomprise but Madame la Baronne de Wyeth,
+a lady more or less known to fame in two continents, but whom the
+unwitting Paul had not yet so much as heard of in the whole course
+of his life. He was conscious in the chill and gloom of the November
+evening of a lively and slender figure, which danced as if upon springs
+for a mere instant as it alighted from the carriage, of an accompanying
+rich rustle of silk, the exhalation of a fine perfume, the glance of
+a dark eye towards him as he raised his hat and stood aside from the
+doorway, and then the first encounter was over and was dismissed from
+mind.
+
+There was no Annette at dinner, but he had not expected her, and was
+glad to know that she was in hiding. But when, after an hour or two's
+aimless ramble under the shadow of the Terre de Falaise, he returned
+to the hotel and entered the _salle a manger_, he found there a certain
+unwonted sense of warmth and brightness. Not only was the stove
+blooming cherry-red at the far end of the apartment, but the little-used
+fireplace was aglow with blazing pine-logs, and two extra lamps were
+set upon the table. He noted these things with that particularity a man
+spends upon detail at those times of subdued and profound emotion when
+he seems incapable of noting anything, and took his seat carelessly
+at the table in his accustomed place. The juge, and the garde, and the
+bachelor chemist, and the chief of the gendarmerie, and all the rest
+of the customary convives, dribbled in one by one, and exchanged the
+customary salutations. Time was when they had been immensely interesting
+as types of mankind more or less rural or townish, but to-night he was
+weary of them, and would very willingly have been alone. The half-seen
+vision of two hours ago had passed completely from his mind, and the
+broad-beamed, apple-cheeked Evariste had already served the soup when
+Madame la Baronne de Wyeth rustled into the room with an aspect so
+commanding and stately that all the Belgian gentlemen rose to their feet
+and bowed as she took her seat at table. Paul rose and bowed with the
+rest, and the lady, with an easy and graceful inclination from left
+to right, offered to him a kind of specialized salute as she sat down
+immediately opposite to him. She was full between the glow of the two
+extra lamps, and at a first glance, by dint of bright eyes, sparkling
+teeth, a high complexion, and a Parisian half-toilet, she looked as if
+she might have been a beauty. She was barely that, as a second glance
+discovered, but she had an undoubted charm of grace and manner, and
+Paul, whose native origin and customs of life had led him far from the
+scene of fine ladyhood, was greatly impressed by her. So were the rest
+of the diners for that matter, and the customary rough banter of the
+table was hushed in the presence of this new arrival. The men conversed
+in whispers when they spoke at all, and in the intervals between the
+courses they crumbled their bread upon the tablecloth in a manifest
+embarrassment. Not a word was exchanged between Paul and his vis-a-vis
+until, towards the close of the meal, the lady's attendant brought to
+her a small tray of silver with a fine little flacon of transparent
+Venetian ware, and a liqueur-glass upon it She had drunk nothing but
+water throughout the repast, but she now poured out a spoonful of some
+amber-coloured and highly aromatic liqueur, and, leaning slightly across
+the table, said, with a marked American-English accent:
+
+'May I trouble you for a single small lump of sugar, Mr. Armstrong?'
+
+She held out the liqueur-glass towards him, and Paul, in answer to an
+imperious little nod of the head, which seemed to indicate that he was
+obeying orders correctly, dropped a square nodule of sugar into it, and
+looked up with a questioning aspect.
+
+'My name appears to be known to you, madam?' he said.
+
+'My dear sir,'she purred back again in what he learned to recognise
+later on as the true Bostonian tone, 'your name is known to
+everybody--or, at least, to everyone who is worth knowing. Haven't we
+all been going wild in London and New York about your last comedy, and
+isn't your portrait in the photographers' windows everywhere?'
+
+Paul was young, and therefore, if not vain, at least accessible to the
+assaults of vanity, and he blushed to the ears with pleasure. He had
+not noticed until the moment when the lady set her thickly-jewelled hand
+upon it that a little silver bell was placed at her side. She touched
+it, and her maid entered, and at a murmured aside retired, returning in
+a moment with a filigree card-case.
+
+'That is my name,' said the lady; 'you may not have heard it before.'
+
+There was so complete a certainty of recognition in her voice and manner
+that Paul, though a very poor courtier indeed, bowed as he read the
+card, and murmured that everybody knew the name of Madame la Baronne de
+Wyeth.
+
+This, as it turned out, was destined to embarrass him a little; but
+Madame was graciously communicative, and he was not long in learning
+that she was the authoress of a volume of poems which bore the title 'Le
+Cour Soupir.' She would be proud and delighted, she told him, to have
+his judgment alike on the original work and its rendition in French,
+which was also the labour of her own hands.
+
+'You see, Mr. Armstrong,' she said, 'I was born in Paris, though of
+American parentage, and I have lived there nearly all my life, so that I
+am really and truly quite bilingual. French and English are exactly one
+and the same to me, so far as facility of expression goes; and I did not
+care to entrust the expression of my most intimate and sacred thoughts
+into a stranger's hands. To appeal to the readers of French and English
+is to appeal to the whole world of intellect. Perhaps that is not a very
+modest desire; but it is mine, Mr. Armstrong, as I think it must be
+that of all those who are conscious of great thoughts. By the way,' she
+asked, with a comprehensive glance around the table, 'do any of these
+gentlemen speak English?'
+
+'Not a word,' Paul answered.
+
+'If you are quite sure of that, Mr. Armstrong,' said the lady, 'we can
+pursue our talk in peace; but there is nothing so disconcerting as to
+dread an eavesdropper when one is exchanging confidences.'
+
+Paul had not, so far, begun to exchange confidences, and he rather
+wondered in his own bourgeois mind if this fascinating lady were
+offering him a challenge to a flirtation. It might very well have
+appeared, so thought the Exile who recalled these things with so clear
+an after-light upon them, that the lady had that object, and no other;
+but for the moment there was a natural embarrassment in thinking so.
+
+'You have written verse, Mr. Armstrong?' asked the Baroness.
+
+'Reams,' Paul answered, with a laugh, though he was not entirely at his
+ease.
+
+'Oh,' said the lady, 'you must show me some of it; you must show it to
+me all. I am sure, from your prose, that you have the true singing
+gift; and when one can both think and sing, one is a poet, you know, Mr.
+Armstrong.'
+
+'I have nothing to show,' Paul answered; 'I have burnt all my poor stuff
+long and long ago.'
+
+'And you write no longer?' she asked--'you write verse no more? Oh, but
+that is wicked--it is criminal to have the gift and not to use it
+'But then, of course, one knows how much depends upon congeniality of
+surrounding and society. There have been times when I have thought that
+my own poor little pipe was silenced for ever. It is so easy to lose
+heart; it is sometimes so very difficult to retain one's courage and
+animation. Do the gentlemen remain here, by-the-by, to smoke, Mr.
+Armstrong?'
+
+There was a something odd in the way in which she used his name--a
+something not at all easy to be defined--and it influenced Paul
+strangely every time she spoke it. It was not altogether unlike a
+caress, if one could associate an idea of that sort with the manner and
+meaning of a great lady with whom one had not exchanged a word until
+within the last half-hour. Paul knew not what to make of the grand dame;
+but she fluttered and flattered him prodigiously, and in his excitement
+the troubles which had seemed so chokingly bitter so brief a time ago
+were all for the moment forgotten.
+
+'They sit about the table for an hour or two after dinner,' Paul
+responded, in answer to her last question.
+
+'I notice,' said the lady, 'that there is a fire in the salon next door.
+If you are not too wedded to your tobacco, I shall be grateful for your
+society.'
+
+'Oh, madam!' cried Paul, 'I am honoured beyond measure.'
+
+And so, when the Baroness had sipped her small liqueur and rose, with
+a queenly little inclination to the company, Paul rose also, and having
+opened the door for her, followed her lead into the next apartment, a
+spacious room, very dimly lighted, and as bare as if it had been made
+ready for a ball. Here the Baroness established her seat upon a settee,
+and Paul was encouraged to bring a chair into her neighbourhood, and
+was there held in discourse. And though he might in the review of later
+experiences have arrived at the conclusion that Madame la Baronne was
+a somewhat heartless and not particularly brainy little fribble, he was
+never able to forget or deny a certain charm of manner which he had
+not elsewhere encountered, and which had in it a seductive warmth and
+gentleness. Before he fairly knew it, he was talking with something of
+the ease and intimacy of an old friend. He had been so sore-hearted
+of late and so removed from all feminine companionship, that this
+unexpected, unlooked-for intercourse with a woman of culture and of such
+undoubted airs of refinement soothed like a poultice. It was water to
+the thirsty, bread to the hungry heart; it was fire and shelter to
+the houseless wanderer. Madame drew him into little confidences, all
+sufficiently simple, harmless, and discreet They related mainly to his
+methods of work, to his acquaintance with brother men of letters, to
+incidents of youthful life, to the early hopes and failures of his
+career.
+
+'How profoundly interesting!' Madame purred from time to time. 'Oh,
+you men of the people, Mr. Armstrong, you men of the people, how you do
+surpass and captivate us all when you just happen to have brains!'
+
+The 'man of the people 'was certainly making no concealment of his
+origin, as he certainly never made any parade of it; but he did not
+quite like this, and perhaps his face revealed as much, for the Baroness
+hastened with great agility to quit the theme. She began to offer to
+Paul some little insight into her own history. It would be a prudery,
+she said, to pretend to be sensitive about it any longer--the whole
+world knew the sordid and melancholy truth; and this sounded like
+a prelude to a much fuller explanation than she was for the moment
+disposed to make, and it helped Paul to understand the hints in which
+she chose to set forward the fact that she was a person of a lonely
+heart, that her husband pursued his affairs in Wall Street and elsewhere
+without her greatly concerning herself as to what those affairs might
+be, and apparently leaving her much to her own devices. He learned to
+think afterwards that these confidences, coming upon so very brief an
+acquaintance, were barely indicative of that exquisite delicacy of soul
+for which the lady gave herself credit, but it did not occur to him
+to think so for one moment at the time. The two extra lamps upon the
+dinner-table had probably been placed there at her own request, but
+it was beyond dispute that she showed to far greater advantage in the
+subdued light in which she now sat Time had had no great opportunity of
+ravishing her good looks as yet, but a certain boldness and bluntness of
+feature which denied her complete right to beauty was lost here, and her
+complexion was subdued, so that to the eye of her companion she looked
+bewitching, and everybody knows how far easier it is to condone a breach
+of taste in a beautiful woman than in a plain one. But now as the talk
+went on and grew momentarily more intimate, Paul was made to see that he
+was in the presence of a suffering heart, that he was speaking with one
+who had never been able to come into contact with another soul. 'We live
+apart from each other, all of us, Mr. Armstrong,' she said. 'It is only
+the artist, only the thinker and dreamer, who cares to grieve over it
+all; but there is something appalling in the thought that no one soul
+really touches another. You shake your head,' she said. 'Forgive me, but
+you are young, and you are not yet disillusionized.'
+
+'I have a right to be in some things,' Paul said to himself; but he made
+no verbal answer.
+
+'No,' she went on in a tone of tender regret in the pretty purring
+American voice, which of itself was like the touch of a soft hand. 'We
+are born to isolation. As one grows older----'
+
+Paul laughed at that outright It was his first laugh for quite a lengthy
+space of time, and he enjoyed it.
+
+'Oh,' said the lady, taking the implied compliment quite seriously, 'I
+am not a centenarian, but I am two-and-thirty, Mr. Armstrong, and in the
+course of two-and-thirty years one may do a very considerable amount of
+living. I say it advisedly, as one grows older the recognition of that
+isolation of which I have spoken grows more and more complete. It beats
+one down into despair at times; but then one is here for other things
+than despair: one is here for duty; one is here to suffer, and to gather
+strength by suffering; that is the whole secret of our destiny. It is
+simple enough, and yet how long it takes to learn the lesson truly!'
+
+Beyond this no great progress was made on that first evening, but it
+appeared that the lady had come to stay for at least a little time.
+It is probable that she had not often found so very responsive an
+instrument to play upon, for Paul Armstrong's one lifelong weakness was
+that any woman of average intelligence, who chose to take the trouble,
+could sound him through every note of his gamut, and the Baroness de
+Wyeth seemed to find a lively satisfaction in the exercise of her own
+power in that direction.
+
+There was no further sign of Annette that evening, and it was not until
+the Baroness had retired that Paul began again seriously to remember
+her. It would at any moment, since his discovery of the lure by which
+she had beguiled him into marriage, have seemed a mere ridiculous
+prudery of conscience to hide from himself that he had thrown the better
+part of his life away; but he had meant to do his duty as it seemed to
+lie plain and straight before him, and he meant it still, increasingly
+difficult as it appeared. But all the talk of the lonely soul, of the
+eternal isolation of the spirit, in which man was doomed to live, all
+the tinsel sentimentalisms of which the talk of the bilingual poetess
+had mainly consisted, afforded perhaps as poor a pabulum as he could
+anywhere have found. There was he, with that sore-stricken heart of his,
+so sore-stricken, indeed, that it was well-nigh numbed, and here for the
+first time in his life he had met a woman of more than common surface
+breeding, of high family--for the Baroness de Wyeth was guilty of no
+mere vulgar brag in claiming so much for herself--of more than ordinary
+attractiveness in person, and of far more than common faculty in the
+direction of a dangerous, sympathetic semi-humbug. Was it any wonder if,
+when he lay down that night, he contrasted the hours of the evening
+with those of the afternoon, or if he recalled the fact that at the
+very turning of the road which had led him to fortune and to fame he had
+thrown away all that could make them really worth the having?
+
+Annette was sleeping off the fumes of brandy and the insane hysteria
+which went along with them. The dainty lady from whom he had just
+parted was going to her repose with her own beautiful, sad thoughts in
+a refinement of surrounding which he could only fancy. His thoughts
+followed her to her chamber until it seemed to him that he was in some
+sort guilty of a profanation, and with that touch of self-chiding the
+born sex-worshipper must needs flash into a mood of adoration. A more
+thoroughpaced small coquette than La Femme Incomprise never breathed,
+yet she must needs be a holy angel for the time being to Paul Armstrong,
+because she had fine eyes and teeth, and could talk with some eloquence
+about heart-sorrows she had never known. And he, he who lay there with
+his career like a stream which is poisoned at its source, might, had he
+guided his own destinies with anything but the judgment of a fool, have
+found himself just such a companion as he had but now parted from,
+and have known in her a life-long comrade, an undying solace and
+inspiration. Oh, fool! and fool! and fool! through all the wretched,
+lonely hours of night--fool! and fool! and again fool unutterable!
+
+Annette, on the morrow, was repentant and pitiable. The contrabandist
+supplies had been of a very limited nature, and now they were over she
+suffered a more than common misery of reaction from excess. For a while
+she was sullen, and sulked in her own chamber; but when her headache had
+worn itself out, she began to creep listlessly about the hotel Paul and
+the Baroness had spent a second evening _tete-a-tete_ and Paul's first
+judgment of the sympathetic nature of her character had been admirably
+confirmed.
+
+Husband and wife had had but one interview with each other since the
+latest outbreak, and this had not tended to improve their relations or
+to sweeten the temper of either one or die other. Paul had not mentioned
+the existence of his wife to the Baroness until he had learned of the
+lady's intention to make a stay of some length in Montcourtois. Then
+he had said to himself dismally: She will think I have hidden something
+from her unless I mention Annette; and he had named her in a mere
+instinct of self-protection.
+
+'My wife,' he had said simply, 'would be very happy and honoured to meet
+you, but she is confined to her room by a slight indisposition which I
+hope will pass away in a little time.'
+
+'I shall hope, then, to make her acquaintance to-morrow,' said the
+Baroness, and thereupon they got back to transcendentalisms and soul
+solitude, and made up their minds how sweet a thing it would be if
+only it were possible for any one human creature to know and thoroughly
+understand another. With this unfailing battle-horse ready to prance
+into the arena under the Baroness's poetic spur, they were never in
+danger of being gravelled for lack of matter, but found each other's
+society mutually and beautifully stimulative to the heart and mind.
+After Paul's short and unhappy interview with Annette, the Baroness
+requested the pleasure of his society upon a drive she proposed to
+take. He acceding with great willingness, they rolled away together, and
+Madame confided to Paul the purpose of her visit to these solitudes at a
+so inclement season of the year. It was her intent to study the ancient
+Walloon tongue upon its own ground, and to put her studies to some
+literary effect by an elaborate comparison of the language spoken by
+the peasantry of the present day with that of the earliest of the French
+_jongleurs_ and chroniclers.
+
+'So you see, Mr. Armstrong,' she said sweetly, 'that if you are resolved
+upon keeping your artistic quiet here throughout the greater part of the
+winter, you and I will have some opportunity of becoming known to each
+other.'
+
+Paul did not dare to say how warm a welcome he accorded to this
+suggestion, but it was dangerously sweet to him, and he had
+self-understanding enough to recognise that fact. But he was in no mood
+to struggle against whatever Fate might bring. He was not coxcomb enough
+to conceive himself likely to be dangerous to a witty and experienced
+woman of the world, and as to what might happen to himself he did not
+care. He was desolate enough to be desperate, and if in two short days
+he had learned to believe that the final loss of the new interest he had
+found would be among the gravest of troubles, he had learned also as
+a part of that lesson that the society would be strangely sweet to him
+whilst it lasted. On Paul's side there was no thought of a flirtation,
+and on the side of the Baroness there was not much thought of anything
+else, so that they got on most famously together, for it is always
+richer sport in a case of this kind to have one of the parties concerned
+in earnest Paul took all the soulful shop, on the strength of which the
+lady had patrolled Europe and the United States on a sort of sentimental
+journey, to be as serious as the Evangels, and the discussion of it made
+the drive an undiluted pleasure to him.
+
+But when the carriage returned to the hotel and passed Paul's study at
+a walking pace, he caught sight of Annette at the window, and her face
+seemed to him to offer some promise of a scene. She certainly bent a
+look of surprised anger upon her husband and the strange, richly-dressed
+lady with whom he was seated, but he waved his hand to her as he went by
+and made up a mind to trust to the chapter of chances. As it turned out,
+Annette was not inclined to be disagreeable, and hearing of the lady's
+rank, and being casually informed that she was the wife of the great
+American-Belgian millionaire, she became resolved to be gracious, and
+made a careful toilet in preparation for dinner. She and the Baroness
+met at table, and Annette did not shine by contrast with the newcomer.
+The poor thing probably knew it, and when Paul and Madame talked
+together of books she had never seen or heard of, and of people whose
+names were strange to her, she could scarcely have been altogether
+happy. Her husband led her into the conversation now and then, but there
+was nothing for it but for her to dwindle out again, and when the meal
+was over she made a real or pretended excuse of headache to retire.
+Paul was disposed to be grateful to her for what he felt to be a genuine
+forbearance, and he would have given some sign to this effect had
+Annette afforded him an opportunity. But she kept herself sedulously
+apart from him, and it was only at the table that they met at all.
+Things pursued this course until the approach of Christmas, and then an
+incident happened which brought about, or at least very much helped to
+bring about, disaster.
+
+When two people of opposite sexes are constantly in each other's society
+and their main topic of conversation--however hashed, ragouted, rissoled
+and spiced--is the loneliness of the Ego, certain little familiarities
+are likely to ensue which, though they may be of the most platonic
+order in the world, are not likely to be made a subject of outspoken
+confidence between a husband and a wife, or a married lady and her
+husband. Thus, when Madame la Baronne and Paul were quite alone it was
+'Gertrude' on the one side, and it was 'Paul' upon the other, and the
+lady, being the elder, and a little more the elder than she cared
+to say, would occasionally venture upon 'Paul dear,' with an air so
+matronly that the most censorious of observers could have found no
+cavil with the manner of it. It came about in due time, let Laurent's
+watch-dogs do what they would, that the contrabandists once more
+succeeded in running their cargo into the Hotel of the Three Friends. It
+was a very small one, but it was large enough to serve its turn.
+
+Annette had not appeared all day, and Paul's summons at her chamber-door
+had elicited no response. He and the Baroness had dined together and had
+talked in the way now grown customary to them, being neither more nor
+less affectionate towards each other than common, and they were now
+together in the public salon, and, as fate would have it, they were
+alone. The Baroness dropped something with a metallic sound upon the
+floor, and uttered a little cry of dismay.
+
+'Oh, my bracelet!' she exclaimed; 'my favourite, my precious bracelet!
+It is broken, and I would not have had anything happen to it for the
+world!'
+
+Paul ran to lift it from the floor, and assured himself by examination
+that it was not broken. The hasp by which it was fastened had come open,
+whether as the result of accident or design may not be known. Ladies
+have ways of saving a platonic converse from mere dulness, and this
+may have been one of them, or may not. But Paul, having shown to
+demonstration that the ornament was undamaged, the Baroness held out a
+very prettily-rounded, plump, white arm, and Paul, trembling a little at
+the slight contact the task involved, proceeded rather clumsily to fix
+the bracelet in its place. He looked up, and the lady's eyes were fixed
+upon his face with an expression of grave and serene tenderness. His own
+eyes were humid, and he looked back at her as an earth-bound soul might
+look towards paradise. And on a sudden, before a sound of warning had
+been heard by either of them, their two hands were struck violently
+apart, and Annette stood between them, her eyes flaming with rage
+and the spirit of temporary insanity last imported by the domestic
+smugglers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+[Note: The print copy had a missing page here.]
+
+'No man knows the sex. Women are like Tennyson's description of the
+law--a wilderness of single instances; but except for those surprising
+examples which are detected for us only by the talisman of a great love,
+there is a family likeness amongst them. The woman is the tougher-fibred
+creature, and there is excellent good reason why she should be so. She
+suffers as no man ever suffers, and she could not bear her pangs--she
+would go mad under them--if she were half as sensitive to suffering as
+the less-tried male; and on the moral side the lady is a pachyderm and
+the average workman an un-shelled polype in comparison. I invoke,' he
+cried, striding the little grassy platform on which his feet had worn a
+pathway between his tent-door and the chattering runnel--'I invoke the
+unnumbered squads and battalions and armies of shame which are known,
+and always have been known, to every town and city which has ever dared
+to call itself civilized since history began. From Lais in her jewelled
+litter to Cora in her English landau in the Bois, and on to the
+shabbiest small slut who flaunts her raddle and her broken feather in
+the slums of London, the same story is told and the same moral preached.
+Where is an equal army of men to be found to invite the contumely of
+their own sex? A woman's virtue is her continence, and a man's virtues
+are truthfulness and courage. There is an unspeakably great army of
+the one sex which makes a show and a lure of its penal uniform. Find me
+anywhere a band of men who flaunt themselves in an equal denial of the
+virtues proper to man, who parade themselves as cowards and liars, and
+strive to make a living by the parade of their own desertion from the
+manly principle. The tender sensibility of the generic woman is a fraud,
+and I should know that better than most men, because I so long believed
+in it and had so many rude awakenings from faith. But, oh I now and
+again--happy the man who learns it early!--there is a woman to be found
+so strong and delicate, so tender yet courageous, so much beyond the
+best that men ever find in men, that there is nothing for us but to
+abase our souls in gratitude and worship and wonder. We--we have genius
+of a hundred sorts, and still genius is rare; we invent, we construct,
+we drag new sciences, patient fact by fact, from the regions of
+darkness; we think great thoughts and speak great words--there is no
+limit set to the passion of our intellectual greed, no limit to the
+conquering march of eternal achievement; and when all is said and done
+there never lived a woman who had true genius for anything but love and
+goodness. There in that glorious small specialized field they shine, and
+they shine the brighter and more splendid because of their contrast
+with a sordid, heartless, stupid, and greedy sex. And there,' he said,
+kneeling to stir the slumbering embers of his camp-fire--'there, shining
+in that little shining field, are you, Madge, brightest amongst the
+brightest and saddest among the saddest, and here am I who wrecked your
+life for you with such admirable good intent'
+
+The rage flamed out. He took his seat upon his camp-stool, and shredded
+tobacco for his pipe, staring with vacant eyes into the smoke-fog which
+everywhere imprisoned his gaze, and in a minute he was back at his
+dreams again, and the past once more unrolled itself before him.
+
+He was back in Montcourtois, marching the cobbled pavement of the
+_place_ in front of the Hotel of the Three Friends, hatless and just
+half conscious of the touch of the wintry air on his cheek. The Baroness
+was newly rankling under an insult now so many years of age; and
+Annette, clearly visible at moments between the slits of the Venetian
+blinds, was still pacing the lamplit salon. The whole thing happened in
+his mind again precisely as it had happened in fact so very long ago.
+
+A sudden remembrance and a sudden impulse moved him almost in the same
+instant. When the bracelet had fallen from her arm, the Baroness had
+cried out to the effect that it was her most valued treasure, and Paul
+suddenly called to mind the fact that it still lay on the floor of the
+salon. Annette might observe it at any moment, and might choose to wreak
+her supposed offence upon it; and, thinking thus, he hastened back
+to the apartment, prepared for any storm that might assail him. But
+Annette, who, in the inexplicable changes of mood which affected her
+at such times as these, was marching gaily up and down the room singing
+'Tout le long de la route 'to a swinging rhythm, chose to disregard
+him. He saw the precious ornament lying where it had fallen, possessed
+himself of it, and passed out at the further door. For any sign she
+gave Annette may not have seen him, and Paul had time, as he crossed the
+corridor to his study, to remark upon a form of alcoholism which allowed
+its victim unembarrassed speech in combination with a steady gait and an
+entire irresponsibility of thought. The manifestation was comparatively
+new to him, and he had spent some thought upon it It was so foreign
+to the popular idea of drunkenness that it accounted to him for his
+long-continued blindness to the truth.
+
+He was tarred with the literary brush, which is to say that he was
+eternally bent upon the examination of all human symptoms, whether
+they displayed themselves in himself or in another. He had made it the
+business of his life to analyze those symptoms, though he was but as
+yet a chemist's apprentice, wandering and wondering through the vast
+laboratory of the world. Yet, apprentice as he was, he had learned
+enough of the secret of his own craft to know that the professional
+analyst of emotion quickens perception at the expense of sensation. The
+man who is always pulling emotion to pieces as a part of the day's work
+grows to a philosophic indifference about it, as a vivisector becomes
+dead to a sense of pain. Yet neither the anatomist of the living
+soul nor the anatomist of the living body becomes insensible in any
+appreciable degree to the exigence of his own pains, and the memories of
+a thousand triumphant operations will not hinder the start and outcry of
+the greatest of surgeons if you stick an unexpected pin into any part of
+his anatomy.
+
+Paul had laid his hand upon the handle of the door of the study, and
+with his disengaged hand was fumbling in his pocket for a match, when he
+heard a tripping footstep on the stairs behind him, and he was hailed by
+the Baroness's Parisian maid. Madame la Baronne, so the maid explained,
+had let fall a valuable ornament in the salon; had Mr. Armstrong seen
+it, and, if not, would he give orders that it should be sought for and
+returned? Paul felt the precious object in his pocket.
+
+'I do not know Madame's arrangements,' he said, 'but I have the
+bracelet, and, if it were possible for her to receive me, I should like
+to hand it to her personally.'
+
+'Oh, but yes,' said the maid. Madame la Baronne had her little suite
+of rooms, and was quite in position to receive. M. Armstrong's desire
+should be named to her, and the maid would bring an answer.
+
+She fluttered upstairs with swashing petticoats and a flutter of
+ribbons, and Paul waited in the corridor below. On the waxed floor of
+the salon Annette's feet still moved to a rhythmic, half-dancing walk,
+and her bird-like voice soared to--
+
+         'Tons les deux, la main dans la main,
+     Nous poursuivions notre chemin,
+         Sous la celeste voute.'
+
+'Under the celestial vault,' said Paul; 'and bent on the discovery of
+what infernal regions?'
+
+The maid came back, pruning herself with coquettish graces, to answer
+that Madame la Baronne would have pleasure in receiving M. Armstrong
+in five minutes, and, having delivered her message, rustled rapidly
+upstairs again. She paused at the turning of the stair, and leaned over
+to say:
+
+'Numero quinze, the fifth door to the right of monsieur.'
+
+'Thank you,' Paul answered, and, turning into the darkened study, struck
+a light and consulted his watch. It was ten minutes past nine, and he
+sat still to await the quarter hour. There was a clattering of pots and
+pans in the distant kitchen, and Annette was still singing and walking
+in the near apartment An occasional murmur of voices, a click of
+billiard-balls, and even the faint noise made by the shuffle of a set of
+dominoes in the cafe over the road reached his ears, but save for these
+slight signs of life the world seemed asleep. Annette suddenly ceased
+to sing in the middle of a bar. He heard her open the door of the salon.
+She passed the little corridor in silence, and ascended the stair. He
+heard the key turn, first in the lock of one door and then in that of
+another. He consulted his watch once more by the flickering light of
+a lucifer match. He was within a minute of the appointed time, and he
+began to ask himself with a fluttering heart what he was to say, and how
+he was to bear himself in the coming interview. Upstairs outraged purity
+and dignity were waiting for him, and he himself, innocent as he had
+meant to be, was yet in a sense the author of the outrage. The minute
+crawled. It ticked its final second out at last, and he arose holding
+the bracelet in his hand. He mounted the stair, knocked at the door the
+maid had indicated to him, and was bidden to enter. The Baroness was
+seated in a sea-green dressing-gown ornamented by many pretty devices in
+lace of priceless fabric, which had taken a coffee tint by reason of
+its age. A book was lying on her knees, and she was toying with an ivory
+paper-knife which had its haft in a silver embossed rhinoceros tooth.
+She nodded Paul to a chair which had evidently been placed for him.
+
+'I see,' she said, 'that you have found my bracelet'
+
+He handed it to her without a word. She purred a 'Thank you,' and tested
+its clasp about her arm.
+
+'Sit down, Mr. Armstrong,' she said.
+
+Paul was still voiceless, but he echoed the coldly courteous Mr.
+Armstrong 'in his mind with some dismay.
+
+'I do not see,' said the Baroness de Wyeth, 'how it is possible to
+pass over the incident of to-night in silence. Perhaps we may speak one
+explanatory word about it and let it go. What have you to tell me, Mr.
+Armstrong?'
+
+'Well----'
+
+Paul balanced appealing hands in front of him, waved them, suffered them
+to fall at his sides, and said no more.
+
+'You must be conscious,' said the Baroness, tapping the book which
+lay before her with her paper-knife, 'that it was by accident that the
+incident which is only known to ourselves did not happen in public. In a
+measure I have compromised myself, and, if you will permit me to say
+so, I am not a woman who is accustomed to be compromised. Your wife
+objects--a little unconventionally perhaps--to our association. I am
+a woman of the world, and I know very well what construction might be
+placed on such an episode. We can both see clearly that such a thing
+might happen again at any instant under circumstances less favourable
+to my reputation, and I cannot afford to risk the renewing of it I
+am seriously afraid that I shall have in future to deny myself the
+privileges of a very pleasant friendship.'
+
+'Your will shall be my law,' said Paul 'I have no excuse to urge, and
+have certainly no complaint to make of your decision. I shall go at your
+command, Gertrude----'
+
+She waved the paper-knife against him with a gesture which seemed to
+protest against that one dear familiarity.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he cried; 'the name escaped me. I shall not have
+the chance to use it often after this, and you may let it pass. I am
+going, but I must tell you this: I have not been very fortunate in my
+choice of friends amongst women, or in the choice which has been thrust
+upon me, and so long as I live I shall remember----' He paused, and
+waited for a while until he regained the mastery of himself. Then he
+went on steadily, with a level voice almost as if he were a schoolboy
+reading from a lesson-book: 'I shall remember as long as I live the
+beautiful thoughts with which you have inspired me, your kindness, your
+friendship--and, and----'
+
+He never knew how it happened--men of his temperament never do know--but
+he was on his knees before her, and the words burst from him with a sob.
+
+'And--you!'
+
+She smiled upon him from the maternal height of the coquette who is a
+year or two older than the man she coquets with.
+
+The tears were in his eyes and on his cheeks, and glistened in the
+virgin beard. She stooped forward and laid a hand upon his head.
+
+'Do you care so much to leave me, Paul?' she asked.
+
+A man of the world would have known the studied quaver in the voice--the
+throaty, stagey sweetness of it. What was to be expected of a yokel of
+genius who had been rushed through a hundred towns or so in everlasting
+association with De Vavasours and Montmorencys--rushed through London
+and through Paris under much the same inauspicious petticoat influences,
+and had hardly ever met a real live lady in his life on terms of
+intimacy until now? And Madame la Baronne de Wyeth had told him enough
+and had shown him enough in the way of correspondence with distinguished
+people of both hemispheres to let him know that she could play the
+part of _grand dame_ at discretion anywhere. That was possibly the
+preponderant influence in his mind. Had he himself been a gentleman
+by extraction, had he been able to meet this exquisite and delicate
+creature of old dreams and modern conditions on any terms of equality,
+he would not have abased himself in spirit as he did. The woman was
+regnant The woman is always regnant, whether she be queen or dairymaid,
+but the barrier between himself and her was built of the old hurdles
+of low birth and iron fortune. Here anyway in his heart rang the knell
+'Good-bye,' the farewell, farewell, farewell which every poet worth his
+salt has heard not once but many times, and, in the middle of the dirge
+the bell rang so remorselessly, came the exquisite chrysm of a fondling
+hand upon his head.
+
+It dwelt there scarcely for a moment, and if every nerve had not been
+vibrant with feeling, the touch was so light that it might almost have
+passed unnoticed. As things happened it was like a torch touching
+a torch as yet unlighted, and the young man flamed. He caught the
+caressing hand as it left his hair, and kissed it.
+
+Ah! the weeping tears and the melancholy Touchstone humour that smiled
+wryly to see them, each as big as a pea.
+
+The Baroness surrendered her hand, and Paul kissed it with that passion
+which inspires a pilgrim at the shrine, and the odd something superadded
+which has made fools of men since Eve plucked her first girdle of
+fig-leaves. He wept above the hand, and he fondled the hand, and he
+kissed it with protesting murmurs of undying affection and esteem, and
+whilst this storm was in danger of playing itself out, and the unsuing
+suitor was likely to make an end of the business and go, the disengaged
+hand of the Baroness stole out and took him maternally by the chin,
+under the rain-soaked beard.
+
+'Paul dear,' said the Baroness, 'I did not think that you would have
+felt our parting like this. We can't help it, we literary people--we
+must quote, we must express the profoundest feelings of our souls in
+the words of other people. What's the Shakespearian line? "I hold it
+good that we shake hands and part", Good-bye, Paul.'
+
+He was on his feet again, and they were hand in hand. Her left hand was
+on his right shoulder. Their eyes met and lingered on each other.
+
+'We're saying good-bye, Paul,' purred the Baroness in a voice of
+tenderest cadence. 'You see the need for it, don't you, you dear boy?
+Perhaps we may see each other later on, but it _is_ good-bye now, for
+the time being. It must be so. You see that, don't you, Paul dear?
+
+'Oh yes,' he said, 'I see it. Who could fail to see it? You shall have
+my thanks when I can offer them for having asked no explanation, no
+apology.'
+
+'Paul,' said the Baroness, and the left hand on his right shoulder drew
+him a little nearer to her. Once, a year or two before, he had been up
+in the Yorkshire dales, and had strolled along by the side of the Wharfe
+on a day when the river ran beryl-brown or sapphire clear as it glanced
+over pebbly shallow or rocky depth. There was the beryl glint in her
+eye--the darling brown with the liquid light playing upon it. He looked
+now. The woodlands were about him; the river murmured near. The damnable
+artistic gift which made use of all accomplished experience helped him
+to obey the impulse of the slow, persuasive hand. The beryl light in the
+eyes invited him, and the faint droop of languishing eyelid did the rest
+'Paul dear,' she whispered, 'it is good-bye. You may kiss me just this
+once and go. Kiss me, Paul dear, as you would kiss your mother's ghost,
+and go.'
+
+He stooped and kissed her, reverently and lingeringly, upon the
+forehead.
+
+'Good-bye,' he said--'good-bye.'
+
+Then, with an electric amazement, her lips were on his for a single
+instant, and she strained him near to her.
+
+'Now, go,' she said, withdrawing herself before he had found time to
+answer her embrace. 'Go, and farewell!'
+
+He was in the upper corridor almost before he knew it, in the confusion
+of his nerves. The key snapped quickly in the lock, and he was alone. He
+groped his way along the darkened passage until he reached the head
+of the stairs, and there he recovered some consciousness of fact. He
+drooped slowly down into his study, and sat there in the dark and cold
+for hours, swearing fealty to contradictory deities of passion and of
+friendship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+That year winter had advanced with a delaying foot thus far across the
+Belgian Ardennes, but this was the hour chosen by the icy king for the
+beginning of his real siege of that region. Whilst Paul sat in his study
+in the dark, the cold gathered about him tenser and more tense until he
+was fain to seek the warmer shelter of his own room. There across the
+gleaming darkness of the window-panes he could discern great broad
+snowflakes loitering down one after the other as if intent on no
+business in the world, and yet in spite of their seeming want of purpose
+they had covered the earth six inches deep before daybreak.
+
+He awoke in the morning to look out upon a world of virgin
+white:--street, and roofs, and far-spread trees and fields all dazzling
+in their winter cloak beneath a sky of cloudless blue, white towards the
+horizon where it could catch the lustre of the up-beating brightness
+of the snow. In the dark cold mornings of the year the hotel people
+had fallen into a habit of bringing up his coffee and pistolet to his
+bedroom. He had been willing enough to acquiesce in the custom; but
+as he sat sipping and munching in dressing-gown and slippers, with a
+travelling-rug about his knees, and revolving the events of last night
+in his mind, he heard a noise in the stables, and, thrusting the
+window open, looked out into the cold, still, clear air. Victor, the
+shock-headed driver, was leading out a pair of flea-bitten grays already
+accoutred for a journey, part of their harness dragging through the as
+yet untrodden snow.
+
+'Holla!' he called--'Victor!' The man looked up, knuckling at his
+forehead. 'Are they shooting to-day?' Paul asked. 'It ought to be a good
+day for the trackers.'
+
+'No, monsieur,' Victor answered; 'it is Madame la Baronne who departs.
+She takes the express to Verviers at half-past nine. Monsieur will
+excuse; I am afraid of being late already.'
+
+From the moment at which he had heard the horses moving down below,
+he had anticipated this without wholly knowing to what he had looked
+forward. He thrust aside with his foot the ice-cold tub in which it
+was his custom to rejoice--as befitted an Englishman of his years--and,
+hastily sponging his face and hands, made a hurried toilet, listening
+meanwhile for any sound which might bring definite tidings to his mind.
+When he descended the carriage was still at the main entrance to the
+hotel, and Victor was pulling on to his chapped hands a huge pair of
+sheepskin gloves, the wool worn inside.
+
+'We have but thirty-five minutes,' the driver grumbled, 'and two miles
+to go, and all uphill.'
+
+'Is that a very awful task?' Paul asked, for the mere sake of saying
+something.
+
+He was intent on retaining his name, and on saying farewell in such a
+fashion that his manner should cast no reflection on the dear departing
+divinity. Mademoiselle Adele was already at the door, wiping her hands
+upon her apron. Madame Alexis, the cook, was ranged up alongside,
+and beyond her was the apple-cheeked Flamande maid One of the male
+hangers-on of the establishment came stumbling down the staircase with
+a great travelling-trunk upon his shoulders, and arranged his burden
+alongside the driver's seat. Then down tripped the Baroness's maid,
+carrying a dressing-bag in one hand and a despatch-box in the other.
+Then followed a nondescript female who charred about the house and did
+scullery-work, and sometimes, in a borrowed dress, served at table. She
+came enveloped in rugs and furs, and at every note of preparation for
+departure Paul's heart beat faster. At last he could bear to look for
+the last figure in the procession no longer, for he was bent on an
+aspect of entire nonchalance, and the desolation of an actual farewell
+struck more and more on his spirit as he waited.
+
+At last the expected frou-frou, and the soft footfall of the
+beautifully-shod feet, warned him of the Baroness's coming.
+
+She paused in the hall to say a gracious word here and there, and to
+press something of evidently unexpected value into the hands of the
+attendant trio, for they all curtseyed low, and said, as if awestricken,
+'Reellement, Madame la Baronne est trop bonne,' as if their strings had
+been mechanically pulled, and they had been trained to speak the words
+in unison.
+
+Paul dared not turn his head, but the gracious little figure paused in
+passing him. Madame la Baronne was richly befurred and so thickly veiled
+that he could discern nothing, or little, apart from the sparkling
+brightness of her eyes. She sprinkled her adieux around her in French
+to an accompaniment of thanks and curtsies, but she spoke to Paul in
+English.
+
+'I am going to Venders,' she said, 'and I am afraid my studies will be
+a little broken. In the meantime I will write to you and give you an
+address, and I shall be glad if you will answer me.'
+
+She held out her hand, and Paul held it for a mere instant, no
+longer--he was careful of that--than the occasion would have demanded
+had but the merest friendly acquaintance existed between them. He dared
+not trust himself to speak, but he raised his hat and pressed the hand,
+and the pressure was returned. Then the Baroness entered the carriage,
+Victor cracked his whip impatiently, and the slow Flemish horses bowled
+away, their hoof-beats silenced by the snow. They had reached the
+corner, and in another instant would have been out of sight, when Paul
+gave an artificial start, as if he had suddenly called to mind something
+of importance, and dashed after the retreating carriage. He overtook it
+easily enough, and, laying a hand upon it, ran alongside.
+
+'This is not good-bye?'he said. 'Tell me that this is not good-bye.'
+
+'I hope it is not good-bye,' she answered. 'But go now, dear heart, I
+beg you; you know why I am going.'
+
+The 'dear heart' thrilled him through and through.
+
+'You will write?' he asked.
+
+'I will write to-night,' she said, 'but you must leave me now.'
+
+He fell from the carriage side, and the vehicle went on its leisurely
+course, leaving him standing in the snow and staring after it; but
+recollecting himself in a moment, he turned and plodded slowly back to
+the hotel, with as unconcerned and commonplace a look as he could summon
+at short notice.
+
+Annette had one of her old spells of secrecy, and was hidden all
+day long. He was glad to miss her and to be left alone with his own
+thoughts. He could not realize himself and he could not realize the
+Baroness; her promised letter would, however, tell him something. It
+might enable him at once to find his orient.
+
+He passed through a strange day--a day of resentment and of tenderness,
+a day of despair and of hope. He could not work or plan, and reading was
+impossible, and to-morrow morning looked absurdly distant Yet it came at
+last, after an almost sleepless night, in the course of which he heard
+Annette moving and the occasional clink of glass. He could see a light
+gleaming underneath her door half a dozen times, and these reminders
+of her came to him always with a dull ache of wretchedness, yet he fell
+asleep at last and overslept himself, so that he escaped the final hours
+of waiting. The promised letter was to hand, and he tore its envelope
+open with trembling fingers, not knowing what to expect within.
+
+'My very dear Friend' (it began),
+
+'All day I have thought of you; I do not know what feeling has been
+strongest in my mind. I make no secret of the esteem I have for you,
+or of the sorrow I have felt at being forced to end the pleasantest
+friendship I have ever known. I should not say to end it, for such a
+companionship of spirit as we have experienced can never be ended, but
+we must close the first chapter of the book, and the rest will not make
+such happy reading. I have felt my heart ache more than once in the
+contemplation of your unhappiness, for though you have never spoken of
+it, I knew without the episode of last night--I have known almost from
+the first--how profoundly you have suffered and will continue to suffer.
+Ah, my dear friend, it is only those who have suffered in that way who
+can truly sympathize with you. To have found a completer isolation in
+the search for companionship--that is the tragedy of many souls. It is
+yours, and I know it and feel it, because it is mine also.
+
+'I am weary with my journey, and I am so sad and lonely that I have
+scarce the heart to write; but promise me just this one thing: Give me
+half an hour of your thoughts each day, and let me know what part of
+the day you choose, so that I may think of you at the same time. Do
+you believe that any actual communion of the mind is possible in such
+conditions? I should like to believe it. How pure, how spiritual, how
+exquisite a friendship might exist if it were only so!'
+
+Exactly. And what a quagmire a properly experienced lady may lead a
+man into if she so wills! This particular experiment suggested by the
+Baroness is singularly successful in the enslaving of the eager, and it
+has the great merit of permitting the willing horse to do all the work.
+The lover can moon and rhapsodise at a safe distance, and it makes not
+a pennyworth of difference to him whether the mistress moons and
+rhapsodises also, or whether she is engaged in a flirtation through
+another telepathic line, or whether she has a score of different lines
+converging upon her all at once.
+
+Paul, of course, most willingly accorded the lady the daily half-hour
+demanded. He became persuaded in a very little while that the soul of
+Gertrude met his midway, and when she sent him a description of her
+little boudoir, so that he might the better realize her in her own
+surroundings, he used to float away to Verviers in vision, and sit by
+Gertrude in fancy, and hold Gertrude's hand, and express to Gertrude
+all his ardours of friendship and esteem--for, of course, it never got
+beyond that, or was ever to be permitted to get beyond it--and Gertrude
+used to give him vow for vow, all in the range of the highest moral
+feeling. It is possible that there are people who might imbibe this
+sort of mental liquor and come to no damage by it, but Paul found it
+remarkably heady. At first he thought the draught stimulative, but in
+a while he began to know that it was enervating. He began to rebel at
+himself.
+
+'I am throwing away my manhood for a dream,' he said.
+
+For Gertrude, whose letters were fairly frequent and most sisterly
+tender, would hear nothing of Paul's petition that he might be allowed
+to visit her--would not even listen to any suggestion that they might
+ever meet again in any approach to the happy seclusion and privacy of
+the first sweet days.
+
+But Paul Armstrong was feeble in rebellion against himself, and he was
+here caught firmly in the toils of the first passion of his manhood. The
+May Gold episode and the Claudie Belmont episode had long been things to
+laugh at. Marriage had turned out an unredeemed tragedy, which had never
+had even the poor excuse of a passing infatuation behind it He had never
+loved Annette, and she was fast growing into a terror and an aversion.
+And now all this tomfoolery of telepathic communion, this wilful
+brooding over an absent woman, this summoning of her features to mind,
+this recalling of her tones, this yearning in which his own soul seemed
+to beat its mortal bars in the strife to draw her spirit near, made
+a clean end of the platonic theory so far as he was concerned. The
+Baroness, at her end of the spirit-wire, appears to have been less
+potently disturbed. Perhaps she took less pains to disturb herself;
+possibly she took none whatever.
+
+It came at last on Paul's side to amount to something very like a
+possession. Night and day his thoughts hovered about her. He would not
+admit to his mind one dishonouring thought of her.
+
+     'Charlotte was a married woman, and a moral man was Werther,
+     And for all the wealth of Indies would do nothing for to hurt her.'
+
+And Gertrude was a married woman also, and Paul--who had not too rigidly
+obeyed the precepts of morality in his day--was bent on honour in
+this instance. He wrote reams of letters, all of which might have been
+printed without harm to anybody; but by-and-by his passion began to
+carry him off his feet, as passion has carried stronger men than he, and
+the fever of his pulses got into his ink, and he began to make love, but
+with a dreadful guardedness and a deadly fear lest he should offend
+the susceptibilities of this creature of the skies. She rebuked him
+by implication and in a parable. She had had a mournful letter from a
+friend in Boston, an old and valued correspondent, a lady whose domestic
+relations were of the saddest sort, who had long believed herself to
+have established a pure and tender friendship with a person of the
+opposite sex, and who had now been shocked and horrified beyond measure
+by a proposal of elopement How rare a genuine friendship between men and
+women seemed to be! How happy was she in the security she enjoyed in
+the solidity of his character, in that delicacy of mind and heart which
+permitted the most delightful intimacies of thought without danger. He
+wrote back fiercely that he was unworthy of the confidence she reposed
+in him, that he loved her passionately, adoringly, and without any dream
+of hope.
+
+'I will not soil my worship of you by even asking for your forgiveness,'
+so he wrote. 'I have told you what I had to tell. There is no longer any
+power in me to hide it And now I know that it is good-bye indeed. In the
+sorrow and the loneliness which are rightly mine--since I earned them
+with much foolish painstaking--I shall never cease to love you, but I
+shall not presume to write to you again.'
+
+'My poor Paul,'she wrote back to him, 'what madness!
+
+And how great a cruelty to snatch from me the solace of your friendship
+'Forget the madness, dearest friend. Undo the cruelty. Let us bury the
+memory of this outburst, let us go back to the past. Alas! did ever man
+or woman return to the past? But we must not part in this way. You must
+write to me at times. You must let me know of your artistic hopes. You
+must give me news of your career.'
+
+He was amazed to find that he was answered at all, and even in his
+misery he joyed to find himself reprieved from the sentence his own
+conscience had passed upon him. He was still free to write, and he wrote
+almost every day, though he sent off his budget only once a week. He did
+not make love in the sense of seeking to persuade his goddess to descend
+to him, but he made no further disguise of himself, and he was not again
+reproved.
+
+This all led to a long space of infertility, and it was stretched still
+further by the departure of the Baroness to Paris. There, she wrote
+Paul, she would be much in society, and if he should find himself in
+the gay city at any time during her stay, she could introduce him to
+charming and useful people. But she was very round in her warnings to
+him.
+
+'You must not come,'she told him, 'unless you are absolutely sure that
+there is no danger of making me absurd in the eyes of my friends. Dearly
+as I esteem you, I should never forgive you that. You have been so
+very outspoken of late, and I have permitted you to write your heart so
+freely, that I should be guilty of the foolishest affectation if I were
+silent on this one matter. We cannot control our affections. It is not
+given to us to love and dislike at discretion, but we can control our
+language and our conduct, and I must exact your promise ere you meet me.
+And I will tell you this once, and I will never breathe it any more: Had
+we met under happier conditions, had we both been free to choose, I know
+that I could have loved you. I am thus candid with you because I wish
+you to know how entirely I rely upon your discretion and respect. We
+may have happiness denied us, and to choose it now would be to suffer
+miserably, but we have each a personal esteem to guard. Ah, Paul! be
+kind to me. Do not make it hard to see you again.'
+
+If all this were written, as Paul came most devoutly to believe in later
+days, with the single-minded desire to enslave him yet more completely,
+it was truly heartless, but that was certainly the end it gained. It
+seemed to him the most pathetic and womanly of effusions, for what woman
+would write that she could have loved a man in happier conditions unless
+she did truly love him? She suffered as he suffered. Without her warrant
+it would have been coxcombical to believe it But the belief made her
+altogether sacred in his eyes, and he vowed a thousand times that
+no word or tone of his should ever offend that angel delicacy and
+tenderness. A curious part of this maniac experience was his estimate of
+himself as it proceeded. He was in a mood entirely heroical. The Baron
+de Wyeth, who was making money to supply the most whimsical needs of the
+absent Gertrude, never entered into his head. It did not offer itself on
+any single occasion to his intelligence to think that there was anything
+to be reprehended in this sterile dalliance.
+
+As for Annette, she had grown to be impossible. She resented the
+guardianship exercised over her with an increasing fierceness. When
+she could smuggle her contraband through the enemy's lines, she locked
+herself in her room, and remained there until the supply was exhausted
+She would emerge blotched, pale, and haggard, and companionship between
+herself and her husband was out of question.
+
+At the time at which the letter just cited reached Paul Annette's
+cunning had been unequal to the war for at least a fortnight, and her
+constitution was still youthful and strong enough to enable her
+to return to something of her earlier aspect after a few days of
+abstinence.
+
+'I have business which will take me to Paris in a little while,' her
+husband told her.
+
+'Very well,' she said indifferently.
+
+'Do you prefer to come with me, or to stay here?' he asked.
+
+'To go with you?'she demanded. 'Under what conditions?'
+
+'Under the conditions I have always offered,' he returned: 'that you are
+accompanied by a female companion of my choice.'
+
+'I shall stay here,' Annette said curtly.
+
+'As you will.'
+
+He was relieved by her decision, not merely because the last thread of
+comradeship between them was broken, but because he dreaded the exposure
+of the cupboard skeleton, which was always putting out a ghastly head at
+him. In a great city like Paris there might arise an occasion of escape
+from control at any moment, and Heaven alone knew what _esclandre_ might
+ensue upon a single escapade.
+
+He made his preparations for departure. Laurent promised his most
+careful supervision of affairs, and Paul left him with plenary powers.
+There were no adieux to make, for Annette declined to see him. He
+travelled to Brussels, and thence to Paris, going away with a relief
+which was made the more complete by the latest intelligence the doctor
+had brought him: there was to be no child of Annette's and his. That
+hope or fear--and he had barely known which to think it--was over.
+
+At Montcourtois Madame la Baronne de Wyeth had been content to live in
+extreme simplicity, and her account of her own surroundings at Veryiers
+did not express any dose approach to luxury; but in Paris she occupied
+apartments of great splendour, had a considerable entourage about her,
+and entertained a limited number of charming people, who were all more
+or less celebrated. Her music was as fine as anything that could be got
+in Paris, for she knew all the great singers and instrumentalists, and
+though the season was about at an end, there was still enough genius in
+the basket to pick and choose from.
+
+It was with a wildly beating heart that Paul alighted at her door, and
+as he stood awaiting her in the luxuriously furnished salon which was
+the centrepiece of her apartments, his knees trembled with agitation.
+He was there to meet for the first time the woman he loved. That was
+strange and yet true. When he had last seen her he had not yet grown to
+love her, or, if he had, he had granted himself no knowledge of it. But
+now he loved, and he had confessed his love, and what was potentially
+a return avowal had been made by her. And they were to meet just
+as friends. There was to be no word spoken of all the passion which
+thrilled and filled his heart and tingled through his veins.
+
+She came at last in a gentle silken rustle, dressed already for the
+reception of the guests who were expected to arrive an hour later. She
+had accorded him this one _tete-a-tete_--this and no other. She was
+transfigured in his eyes, and did indeed show to her best advantage in
+full toilette. The lucent rosy whiteness of arms and shoulders seemed to
+dazzle him.
+
+He extended both hands to her, and she came forward with her lithe gait
+and a smile of great sweetness, and took them in her own.
+
+'Gertrude!' he whispered, and she answered with the one word 'Paul!' and
+had his life depended upon it, he could not have spoken further at that
+instant.
+
+'I am very glad to see you, Paul,' she said, 'very glad indeed.' She
+released one of his hands, and by the other led him to a causeuse near
+one of the splendidly curtained windows. 'But what has happened to you?
+she asked. 'My poor Paul, you are ill! You are not yourself at all.
+There are brown circles round your eyes, and your cheeks have fallen in,
+and you are growing positively gray at the temples.'
+
+'I am not ill,' Paul answered, trying to smile. 'I have had a somewhat
+trying experience of late, and I am here to forget it.'
+
+'May I know of it?' she asked
+
+'No,' said Paul; 'the topic is forbidden.'
+
+She laughed gaily and blushed a little.
+
+'Now, that is very clever, and very wicked of you,' she purred. 'That
+topic is not to be approached even elliptically. But really and truly,
+my poor Paul, you are not well, and I shall see that you take proper
+care of yourself. You will take a glass of wine at once.'
+
+'No,' he said, waving a hand against her as she made a motion to rise.
+
+'You used not to contradict my orders,' she told him, 'and you shall not
+do it now. I can give you a really excellent glass of champagne--not a
+lady's champagne, be it understood, a man's wine--a connoisseur's.'
+
+He made no further protest, and she rang a small silver bell near her
+hand. A grave serving-man appeared in answer to this summons, received
+his mistress's order, and glided away again.
+
+'I have all your news?' the Baroness asked, turning to her guest again.
+
+'All,' he answered--' all there is to tell.'
+
+He had known perfectly well at one time that she was not strictly a
+beautiful woman. He had been able to analyze her, to admit very fine
+eyes and teeth, and a clear, if somewhat florid, glow of complexion. He
+had granted, further, fine hair, and very beautiful hands and arms. But
+he wondered at himself, and could have laughed at his own blindness. The
+power of analysis had gone out of him because he was in love. She was
+merely a soft, dazzling splendour in aspect now, and every look and tone
+and attitude was a witchery and a wonder.
+
+'I have not seen you in evening dress before to-night, Paul,' she said.
+'I like you in evening dress. It is a great test of a man's distinction.
+It is cruel to all but the few. It is distinctly not cruel to you.'
+
+'I am proud to be approved of,' he answered, trying to speak lightly.
+
+The grave serving-man brought in the wine, which proved worthy of the
+hostess's praise. Paul was grateful for it, for it helped to steady his
+shaken nerve. He felt pretty much as he imagined a man might feel who
+was learning to stand under fire.
+
+'It was kind of you,' he said, 'to give me this one hour to myself. I
+shall try to learn my lesson in it I want to assure you how much I have
+laid your injunction to heart, and to promise you that from this time
+forth you shall be implicitly obeyed. When I wrote that wild letter to
+you at Venders I had not the faintest hope of your forgiveness. I need
+not tell you how I thank you for it, how I shall strive to show my
+gratitude. But, indeed, you are my Anthea, Gertrude, and may command me
+anything.'
+
+'Another man would not have found forgiveness, Paul,' she answered,
+turning away her head, and looking downward. 'I do not deny to you now
+that I was deeply amazed, and, at first, humiliated. Then for a time
+I was angry, and I had to ask myself of what indiscretion I had been
+guilty to lay me open to the receipt of such a letter from my dearest
+friend. But we women are weak creatures where the affections are
+concerned, and I felt that I could not afford to lose you, Paul. You
+will not make it necessary for me to lose you?'
+
+'No,' he declared. 'No spoken word of mine shall hurt you. God knows
+what you have been to me since first I met you.' She raised her hand
+against him and looked up with a glance of appeal. 'Oh, surely I may say
+this!' he urged. 'I have been through dark days, Gertrude. I am young,
+and reputation and fortune are calling to me, and I have put a millstone
+about my neck, and but for your friendship I should have broken my
+heart.'
+
+'Paul,' she said, 'my poor boy! My poor, dear boy! I think I would give
+my life if I could comfort you.'
+
+'You do comfort me,' he answered. 'You are the one comfort I have. I
+shall learn in time to think of you as if you were a saint in heaven.'
+
+'Oh!' she purred, 'you dear, simple-souled enthusiast! Don't you know
+yet--haven't you found it out, that simple truth?--that when a man has
+relegated a living woman to the position of a saint in heaven he has
+ceased to care about her? I am not going to turn _you_ into a sanctified
+figure.'
+
+'I should scarcely look for that,' said Paul, with a momentary gleam of
+humour.
+
+'I am going to keep you for a living, large-brained, human-hearted
+friend, and I hope that if we do not see too much of each other, we may
+both grow content with that arrangement.'
+
+She spoke with a smiling vivacity, but she set a delicate little trifle
+of lace and cambric to her eyes, and then looked up and smiled again.
+
+'You do not wish,' he asked, 'that we should see much of each other?'
+His face was very gloomy.
+
+'I mean,' she said gently, laying her hand upon his shoulder, and
+looking into his mournful eyes, 'that we should be discreet I do not
+mean that at all as regards the opinion of others, for there I can trust
+myself and you without a fear. I mean with respect to ourselves. It will
+not be well for your own happiness that we should meet often as we are
+meeting now.'
+
+She rose, and moved away from him a little, standing with the fingers
+of her hands interlaced, and the palms downward. This is a very pleasing
+sort of attitude when adopted by the right kind of person. Taken in
+conjunction with a pensive, sidelong droop of the head, it will yield
+an expression of gently sorrowing coy confidence when employed by a
+competent artist.
+
+'You will promise me,' said the Baroness, with a voice not wholly
+steady, 'that you will never repeat to me what I am going to tell you.'
+
+'You may command me anything,' Paul answered. 'I promise.'
+
+'It will not be well,' she went on, repeating the words she had spoken
+so little a while before, 'for your own happiness that we should meet
+often as we are meeting now. Nor will it be well for mine, Paul. That
+is why I have hesitated so long before I have dared to permit you to see
+me--before I have dared to permit myself to see you. I am strong enough
+now to trust myself, and I put faith, too, in your friendship and your
+chivalry. You will not add to my unhappiness?'
+
+Paul also had left his seat. He stood almost at her shoulder. He was
+near enough to have taken her in his arms.
+
+'Gertrude,' he murmured, 'if anything could add to what I feel for you,
+this would do it. You shall have my tenderest adoration, my constant
+obedience.'
+
+She turned her head slowly, as if she did it almost against her will.
+She raised her eyes and looked at him with a strange steadfastness. She
+spoke in a soft, half-whisper.
+
+'This is our good-bye to love. We have met and we have spoken, and we
+part again. In half an hour we shall meet as friends, and never, never,
+never again as we part now.'
+
+She faced round upon him. Her fingers unlaced themselves and she stood
+with both arms open to him. For one burning instant he held her.
+
+'Your promise!' she whispered, in a frightened voice. 'Your promise,
+Paul! Your promise!'
+
+He suffered her to escape, and she drew herself away lingeringly, with
+the same strange steadfast glance.
+
+'Good-bye, my lover. Good-bye, my king. I shall never meet him again. I
+shall come back to meet my friend.'
+
+The words were but breathed so as to reach the ear, and she turned and
+walked droopingly from the room. So might a bruised lily have been borne
+away.
+
+As for Paul, he had half an hour before the earliest guest was expected
+to arrive, and he tried hard to compose himself. It was heavy work, for
+he was constantly rolling down the hill of endeavour with exclamations
+of wonder and worship. What a woman! What a pearl among women! What
+candour! What courage! What tenderness! What purity! What beauty! He
+was at the height of felicity and the depth of misery with such rapid
+alternations that he lost the sense of difference, and could not
+tell one from the other. But when the half-hour of waiting had almost
+vanished he drank another glass of the wine his _deesse_ had commanded
+for him, and was at least prepared to face the world with a pretence of
+self-possession.
+
+The guests began to arrive. There were but six more, and all were
+masculine. The Baroness made a radiant entrance to greet them. She made
+Paul known to each of them in turn, and all were men of mark. He heard
+everywhere a name which had been long familiar to him, but the latest
+comer of all, whom he had not found time to notice, was familiar in
+something more than name. For it was Ralston--Ralston the great, who had
+been the god of his boyhood--Ralston with his big gray head worn on one
+shoulder or another, with the look of fighting wisdom in his face, quite
+as of old.
+
+'Mr. Ralston,' said the hostess, 'you must know my young friend Mr.
+Armstrong. We saw his comedy together, you remember.'
+
+Ralston remembered, and seemed to remember more than the name.
+
+'We have met before this?' he asked.
+
+'Once,' Paul replied.
+
+'Castle Barfield?'
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+'If you'd rather shelve that----'
+
+'Certainly not--between ourselves.'
+
+The hostess took the escort of the eminent diplomatist who was the
+_doyen_ of the party. The men followed as it pleased them. Ralston and
+Paul went last.
+
+'I am a prophet,' said Ralston, subduing that richly hoarse voice of
+his. 'I told you you would do, and you have done.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+The evening was memorable to Paul for many reasons. There was not a
+great deal of the talk to carry away with one; but if it had not the
+solid brilliance of the diamond, it had the cheaper glitter of the
+sharded glass epigram which sparkles and cuts--an admirable substitute
+on most occasions, though it has the disadvantage of leaving dangerous
+fragments for people to tread upon. The conversation was carried on
+exclusively in French, and, though Paul's ears were quick enough to keep
+abreast of it, his tongue was not, and he was a silent listener for
+the most part Ralston, having pathetically bidden farewell to ease and
+English, seemed as much at home as any person at table; but he told
+Paul, as they walked home together, that he hated to speak a foreign
+language.
+
+'Give me the old familiar tool that one has handled since babyhood. See
+how it adjusts itself to the hand! how one can carve with it! with how
+much comfort and dexterity! English, besides that, is the only language
+in the world. The things that are not to be said in English are not
+worth thinking--if they are speakable at all; and some things are not.
+Look up yonder!' They were in the Place Vendome. His upward gesture sent
+Paul's eyes to the sky, which was sown thick with stars. 'Do you care
+for a talk across a whisky-and-soda and a cigar?' asked Ralston. 'I am
+here in the Rue Castiglione. Come to my room. I have the right nectar. I
+bring it with me when I come to Paris, and let them charge for corkage.'
+
+When the guests had scattered, Paul had looked for one more private word
+with Gertrude; but she had left him no excuse to linger. She had said
+her 'Good-bye, Paul,' with an almost icy sweetness. He wanted to get
+away into solitude to think about her, and was half inclined to excuse
+himself from Ralston.
+
+'Dear little, queer little body, our hostess, eh? Have you known her
+long?'
+
+'Not very long,' Paul answered 'But she and you seemed to have quite
+ancient memories.'
+
+If Ralston would talk about Gertrude, he would be glad to sit with him
+till morning light.
+
+'Oh, I?' said Ralston--'I have known her from her childhood. If she
+makes any secret of her affairs, I mustn't babble, though. Do you know
+the Baron?'
+
+'Not personally.'
+
+'Ah, well---- This way in. I am no higher than the first-floor, and we
+needn't trouble the man at the lift. Here's the room. And now that I'm
+on my own territory, let me say how glad I am to have lighted upon
+you again. I've often wondered what you were making of yourself.
+"Paul Armstrong" is individual enough, and when I saw the name on the
+play-bill, I recalled it, and wondered if it meant you. Whisky, soda,
+cigars. Now we are provided for.'
+
+Paul made himself look as disengaged and easy as possible.
+
+'You asked me if I knew the Baron. What kind of man is he? A strange
+sort of fellow, rather--one-and-thirty--to be indifferent to such a
+woman: brilliant, amiable, charming.'
+
+He spoke with no enthusiasm. He wanted to talk about Gertrude, but he
+did not mean to betray his own concerns.
+
+'The Baron's a very decent fellow; but he has a rather muddy German
+accent, and he can't understand the lady's verses. There's nothing
+worse than that in it. She elects to travel; he elects to stay at home.
+There's no sort of scandal or impropriety. She's a dear little woman,
+and a good little woman, and she has the French-American _pschutt_,
+as the idiot word goes now. She's a bit of a sentimentalist, and an
+exquisite flirt, but the most genuine little creature, too. If she
+wouldn't flirt, she'd be too good for this world.'
+
+'Flirt!' cried Paul, in so much horror that Ralston laughed aloud.
+
+'I have taken advantage of my demi-semi-clerical dignity,' he said, 'to
+preach many sermons to her on that particular. Mind you, she's a most
+estimable woman; and, as you said just now, brilliant and amiable
+and charming. But she flirts--she flirts with me; and, if I were not
+entrenched behind the fortress of threescore years, she'd enslave me as
+she enslaves everybody else. There's an Isolation of the Soul which is
+very effective at short range. Do you happen to have met it yet?'
+
+Was Ralston warning him of set purpose? Had he observed anything--any
+little subtle thing--which had told him how the land lay? Was he
+conceivably speaking as the husbands friend? Was his speech accidental
+or designed? Whatever it might be, and it was certainly enough to
+discomfit the listener greatly, it was not enough to shake his faith
+in Gertrude. When he found time to think about it, he marvelled that so
+shrewd a man as Ralston should have formed so mistaken an estimate of a
+character so sincere and transparent.
+
+If ever a woman had laid the pure recesses of her heart and soul open
+to the inspection of a human eye, Gertrude had done so. He was confident
+that he knew her, and it seemed to him that no two hearts had ever lived
+together in an intimacy at once so chaste and fiery. Gertrude a flirt?
+The tenderness she had shown him that night a pretence? The thing was
+so incredible and ridiculous that it was not worth while to bother
+one's brains with it for even the fraction of a minute. He had found his
+soul's partner--the twin Half of the Pear--and he was more than content
+with his discovery.
+
+Whether Ralston meant much or little, whether, indeed, he virtually
+meant nothing or anything, Paul could not guess; but he was uneasy
+beneath the humorous gravity of the elder's eye, and he changed the
+theme. They had a good hour together, and shook hands and parted with
+a mutual liking, and at the instant at which he reached the street Paul
+was free to take up his station at his end of the telepathic wire and to
+call Gertrude to the other. He walked miles and miles whilst engaged in
+this wholesome and reasonable enterprise, and at length, without in
+the least knowing how he had got there, found himself, dog-tired, in a
+strange quarter of the city. He rambled on until he met a gendarme, who
+put him upon his way, and within ten minutes of this encounter he
+awoke with a start to the fact that he was pacing the pavement of the
+thoroughfare in which he had first seen Annette. The interregnum
+of fatigue which had come in between his passionate dreams and this
+reminder of the sordid realities of his lot went for nothing. The dream
+and the truth flashed together like the electric opposites in clouds and
+awoke a rare thunderstorm within doors. But by the time he had got to
+his hotel this was over, and he crawled wearily upstairs to a fireless
+room, the air of which struck chill and lonely. The apartment in itself
+was well enough, and not many years before he would have thought it
+palatial in its stateliness and luxury; but he would have given a
+thousand pounds at that instant if he could have translated himself to
+the old kitchen hearth at home and into the sight of the old familiar
+faces. He had taken a little champagne before dinner, a moderate
+allowance of wine in the course of the meal, and two rather liberal
+tumblers of whisky-and-soda with Ralston. This was not the direction
+in which he was accustomed to approach excess, but he remembered gladly
+that he had a carafe of brandy in the room. He was chill and tired, and
+in that contradictory condition of discomfort in which a man is at once
+painfully sleepy and distressfully wide awake. He poured a quantity
+of spirit into a tumbler, filled the glass to the brim with water,
+undressed, blew out his candles, and went to bed, and the demons of
+a sleepless night came to him and tormented him. The opening line of
+Tennyson's 'Love and Duty' got into his brain and ticked there: 'Of love
+that never found its earthly close, what sequel?' It recurred with a
+damnable iteration. He tried all the devices for wooing slumber he had
+ever heard of. He assembled an innumerable flock of sheep, for he had
+the knack of making pictures in his mind, and he set them one by one to
+leap through a gap in a hedge, counting them as they went by. He had
+not counted a dozen when the words were back again: 'Of love that never
+found its earthly close, what sequel?'
+
+He repeated the experiment scores of times, but it was always
+interrupted by the same query. He set an unending line of soldiers on
+the march, all as like each other as peas in the same pod. He resolutely
+denuded his mind of thought; he repeated the multiplication table. It
+was all of no service; the question came back remorselessly, and at last
+he set himself to face it. It was dismal enough to look at To think of
+the world without Gertrude was to conceive a barren waste in which it
+was worth no man's while to dwell. To anticipate a life-long continuance
+of the experiences and emotions of the past three months was scarcely
+to invite a more cheerful prospect To hint, even in his own thoughts, at
+any attempt to draw her from her own height of purity was a profanation.
+The quarters and the hours chimed, until the gray spring dawn crept
+through the interstices of the blinds, and fatigue grew more leaden than
+ever. But the devil of insomnia was unconquerable. He relit his candles,
+found a book, and tried to read; but that was as hopeless as the rest.
+
+He had no claim to call upon Gertrude again until he learned that it was
+her goodwill and pleasure he should do so; but he was not forbidden to
+write, and there at least was an occupation to which he could bend his
+mind. He dressed and sat down, dull and haggard, to the task. He wrote
+page on page, feeling as though he dipped his pen in his own heart's
+blood; but when he came to read what he had written, it was no more
+what he had meant it to be than a Hortus Siccus is a living garden, or
+a mummy a live Prometheus. He wrote at last: 'I cannot bear this
+banishment in nearness, and if I am not to see you I must go away. I
+have had a night of fever, and have not slept I dare not trust myself
+to write, but for pity's sake let me have an answer by the messenger who
+brings this.'
+
+He fixed in his mind ten o'clock as the earliest possible hour at which
+he could venture to have the note delivered, and until then he must
+needs have patience. When he went to place his missive in the hands
+of the concierge, with instructions for the time of its delivery, the
+servants had only just begun to stir about the house. He had come down
+great-coated and gloved, as if for an early walk, but the walk was no
+more than a pretext to allay some remotely imaginable suspicion on the
+part of the concierge.
+
+'Imust leave this with you now,' he said, 'because it must be delivered
+at ten o'clock precisely, and I shall probably not be able to return
+till later. The messenger will wait for an answer.'
+
+The man promised that his instructions should be obeyed, and he walked
+into the streets feeling quite aimless and forlorn, and with the
+fatigues of the night still heavy on him. He had not gone far when he
+found a fiacre, and bade the man drive to the Bois and back, and fill
+up two hours with the journey. Now, the chill morning air and the bright
+light falling on tired eyes began to work upon him, and in a little
+while he was peacefully asleep. The cocher awoke him at the door of his
+hotel. He looked at his watch, and it was ten o'clock to the minute. His
+heart turned a somersault as he thought that this was the hour at which
+Gertrude would receive his letter. Breakfast was out of question, but
+by this time either the Bodega or the English bar would be open, and
+he needed a stimulant of some sort before he could face an interview
+if such a favour were to be accorded him. It would be unreasonable to
+expect that the messenger would return in less than half an hour, and he
+spent that time in the society of a glass of well-watered absinthe and
+the English newspapers of yesterday. He read industriously, but the
+only printed words which reached his consciousness were those of the
+theatrical advertisement which told him that the joint work of Messrs.
+George Darco and Paul Armstrong was still being played nightly to
+crowded houses. That did not interest him in the least, and the news
+of Parliament and the police courts might as well have been written in
+Sanscrit for all the impression it made upon him.
+
+He endured his own impatience resolutely for the stated time, and then
+walked back to the hotel. His messenger had not yet returned, but there
+in the vestibule was Ralston, in his brigandish sombrero and his black
+velvet jacket, looking so fit and wholesome that Paul envied him.
+
+'I have just met two of the boys,'said Ralston, 'and we are going to
+breakfast at the Poule d'Or at twelve o'clock. Will you make one of us?
+I can promise you good talk, and honest fare, and wholesome wine.'
+
+'I should like it,' Paul answered awkwardly; 'but the fact is, I can't
+tell whether I am free to go. I dare say I shall be able to give you an
+answer in an hour, if that will do?'
+
+'We must make it do,' said Ralston, and at that instant Paul's messenger
+returned, and handed to him a large envelope of faint saffron tone.
+
+It bore an armorial device on one side in gold and scarlet, and on the
+other a superscription in a handwriting which had been so trained to
+affectation that it was recognisable at a glance to anyone who had once
+seen it.
+
+'You will excuse me,' said Paul; 'I may have to answer this at once.'
+
+He stepped a little on one side and broke the envelope open with the
+certainty in his mind that Ralston had noticed his eagerness and saw
+how his fingers trembled. The thick embossed notepaper held three words
+only, or, rather, two words and an initial: 'Breakfast, noon.--G.' His
+face flushed with triumph, and he turned impulsively on Ralston.
+
+'I find,' he said, with a vivacity in strong contrast with his previous
+manner, 'that I can't come to-day, but I hope you'll give me another
+chance. Supposing you and your friends are at liberty for this evening,
+will you bring them to dine with me? I can trust the Poule d'Or; I know
+it of old.'
+
+'Good,' said Ralston. 'If they are at liberty, we'll be there. What time
+shall we say? Seven?'
+
+'Seven,' Paul answered brightly.
+
+But a new confusion fell upon him. Not a muscle of Ralston's swarthy
+clear-cut face or the full-bearded lips moved, but there was a dancing
+little demon of not more than half-malicious humour in his eyes.
+
+'Seven,' Paul repeated. 'You'll excuse me now? You won't think my haste
+unfriendly?'
+
+'My dear fellow!' cried Ralston, the fun rioting in his eyes by this
+time, though his features were as still as those of a graven image.
+
+'Well,' said Paul, with a desperate, fruitless effort to recover
+himself, 'until seven.'
+
+Ralston shook hands and went his way, and Paul raced upstairs two steps
+at a time and burst into the room he had left less than three hours ago
+in a mood so cheerless and despondent He kissed the letter and clapped
+it to his heart, and strolled up and down exulting. He was not to be
+dismissed; he was not to be sent into the desert, after all.
+
+And, then, what about Ralston? It was really a most unpleasant, a most
+unlucky, chance which had brought him there at that particular
+instant. There was no blinking the fact that Ralston had enjoyed Paul's
+discomfiture, and his talk of the previous night came back to mind--the
+fun he had made of the Isolated Soul; his good-humoured allowance
+for the one foible in the character of a lady whom he had known from
+childhood, and for whom he professed both affection and esteem. It
+matters not how impossible a suggestion of this kind may seem to a
+lover's mind. His rejection of it with a natural scorn is of no
+manner of consequence except inasmuch as it confirms his loyalty. The
+suggestion will stick and will worry, and it will stick the longer and
+worry the more because it will make the sufferer suspicious of himself.
+'Trust me not at all, or all in all,' is a native motto for the man
+of candid soul, and for him an implanted mistrust will not touch
+his mistress, though it may anguish him with a sense of his own
+unworthiness.
+
+But--for the time, at least--these things were no more than mere
+trickeries of self-torment for Paul's mind, and he was on fire to meet
+the mid-day. He got out his handsomest morning raiment and brushed it
+with his own hands, and made a second toilet lest there should be
+a speck on cuff or collar after the morning's drive, and then he
+promenaded the streets at a snail's pace to kill the hour which
+intervened between himself and heaven.
+
+Heaven was a trifle chilly when, after all this patient waiting, he
+reached its portals. Gertrude was like frozen honey. She met him in an
+exquisite morning confection of the latest Parisian design--a something,
+to the uninstructed male eye, between a peignoir and a tea-gown, but
+of costly simplicity, and of colours cunningly suited to match Madame's
+complexion in the daylight. The table was exquisitely appointed, but to
+Paul's dismay the couverts laid upon it were as for apart as the length
+of the table would permit. He looked so comically discomfited at this
+discovery, and his face so easily expressed his disappointment, that
+Gertrude laughed and relented.
+
+'Well, M. Paul,' she said, still laughing, 'I will make a side-dish of
+you,' and with her own pretty hands she re-arranged the table, assigning
+him a position with great demureness in the exact centre of it.
+
+Paul would have made at least an effort to break through the crust of
+sweet ice which enveloped her this morning but for the presence of a
+piquante small brunette of a waiting-maid, who stood on guard, as it
+were, over a service-table at the end of the apartment.
+
+'My maid,' said Gertrude, 'neither speaks nor understands a word of any
+language but her own, but I can assure you that she has eyes, and can
+use them. She invariably attends me at breakfast, and to send her away
+would be----'
+
+She paused.
+
+'What would it be? said Paul. 'Surely Madame la Baronne de Wyeth has the
+right to choose what form of service she pleases at her own table?'
+
+'Madame la Baronne,' replied the lady, with a slight curtsey, 'has
+chosen.'
+
+'But surely, Gertrude----' Paul began.
+
+She stopped him with a significant gesture of the hand.
+
+'Not my Christian name this morning, if you please. And remember,' she
+added, 'my little watch-dog there has eyes, as I have already told you,
+and though she knows nothing of English, I should guess her to be a very
+fair judge of tone. Come now, you stupid boy,' she continued in a voice
+so level and cool that no one who did not understand her words could
+have guessed their purport, 'I will make a bargain with you. If you will
+be kind to me, I will be kind to you. If I receive here a distinguished
+and handsome young Englishman all alone--if in order to receive him I
+make a marked alteration in my household appointments---- Come, now, is
+it worth while to go on with that?'
+
+'No,' said Paul, calling his stage practice to his aid, and following
+her lead,' it is not worth while; but,' he added with a ceremonious
+bow, 'I shall not break my heart if I must needs go on with Madame la
+Baronne. The right which you have given me to use a dearer name is so
+precious to me '--he drew out his watch and pretended to compare it with
+the fairy pendule on the mantel-shelf--'is so precious,' he continued,
+'that I cannot resign it, and if I am absolutely driven to it in
+self-defence, I shall have to invent a dearer name.'
+
+'Now, that, M. Paul,'said Madame, with her tone and face of chill
+sweetness, 'is excellently well done, except for the one little
+circumstance that you do not disguise your ardour. I read in your eyes,'
+she said as calmly as if she were announcing a trifle of news she had
+read in the morning's papers, 'all the fervour of your mind, and I do
+not wish to read it there--that is to say, I do not wish my little maid
+to read it there.'
+
+'Well,' said Paul, 'I will try. If you will let me say what I want to
+say, I will keep a straight face over it.'
+
+'Within measure,' said the lady, with a passing touch of gaiety--'within
+measure.'
+
+'Most things have their measure,' Paul answered, 'until you come to the
+crucial matters of the heart, and they go beyond measure.'
+
+The maid broke in at this point to ask if Madame la Baronne would be
+served.
+
+'At once,' said the mistress, and waved Paul to his place. He bowed and
+took it. The maid served a number of elegant kickshaws, and the grave
+serving-man who had superintended the dinner-table on the previous
+evening entered with a bottle of hock in a cradle and stealthily
+withdrew.
+
+'You gave me but little time,' said Gertrude, 'to prepare for you, but
+I think you will find that we have done very well. Try that hock, M.
+Paul.'
+
+Paul looked down his nose, and in a dry-at-dust voice recited the first
+verse of old Ben's immortal lyric. His voice quavered a little on the
+last lines--
+
+'But might I of Jove's nectar sip, I would not change from thine!' and
+Gertrude broke in with a laugh and an airy little wave of her hand.
+
+'Now, my dear M. Paul,' she said, 'you are really and truly admirable.
+That is quite perfect, and if you will promise me, upon your sacred word
+of honour as a man, not to betray me by a word or a look, I will tell
+you something I never told you before. I have never admired you so much,
+or loved you so dearly, as I do at this hour. You must believe me,' she
+continued, pushing her plate away and beckoning the maid with a slight
+backward gesture of the head, 'I hate this tone of persiflage, but what
+is there left for us if we would be blamelessly alone, and yet speak our
+hearts to each other?'
+
+'Madame,' said Paul, 'I find it a masterstroke of genius.' Their
+tones were ice on both sides, but their words were fire. The maid most
+probably thought her mistress bored, and the guest a dullard. She had
+seemed at first interested in the new arrival, but she lapsed now into
+an attitude of indifference, and the dangerous pretence went on. In
+this intoxicating whirl of passion, when interchange of vows was offered
+under the necessity of constant watchfulness and self-guardianship, the
+meal was not an important matter.
+
+'But,' said Gertrude, 'my dear Paul, you must really do justice to my
+table; the pretence must be absolute.'
+
+'I will try to make it so,' he answered; but the luxurious meal had no
+more relish for him than if it had been desert sand. He struggled with
+it manfully, however, and contrived to keep astride his end of the
+see-saw of pretence.
+
+Who are the best and who the worst of women? Did any man ever venture to
+impugn the fair fame of Madame la Baronne de Wyeth? Yet, had the devil
+a better ally anywhere than this delicate little purring white-breasted
+epicure in the varying flavours of the ruined soul? Oh, the devil is, of
+course, a symbol! Let the phrase pass.
+
+But the Paul Armstrong of ten years later, perched in his fog-bound
+eyrie, staring along the unseen gorge? He tells himself that had she
+been what he believed her, he might have been elsewhere than where he
+finds himself. There had been but a surface ash upon the seeming ruin
+of a life. There was something still to build upon, but she must needs
+destroy what was left. There was wholesome blood in the veins of the man
+who aspired to rebuild, and it was she who poisoned its fount.
+
+'"Queen bee of the honey asps,"' quoth Paul of the eyrie: and he was
+back in Paris.
+
+He was back at Gertrude's table, the worshipped, the immaculate Gertrude
+of those days.
+
+They had reached the end of the repast, and coffee was served in little
+cups of eggshell china encased in filigree gold.
+
+'A gift from the Khedive,' she said, indicating these. 'Sardou was with
+me when I was in Alexandria.' She laughed, and what with her eyes, to
+which a single glass of the rare hock had given an added sparkle, and
+what with her faultless teeth, she fairly dazzled on her companion.
+'Yes, that is the creature's absurd name. Sardou is the solemn personage
+who has been waiting upon us all the morning, and his godfathers and
+godmothers had the impertinence to baptize him in the name of Victor. I
+was telling you that Sardou was with me in Alexandria when the Khedive
+was so gracious as to offer me this little souvenir, and I implored his
+Highness that he might be permitted to make a study in coffee in the
+palace kitchen. He made it, and the result is adorable. _Inter alia_,'
+she said in the same tone, 'you, too, are adorable this morning, and
+now I think I may snatch a longed-for moment and tell you so in earnest.
+Juliette, bring me a letter you will find upon my toilet-table, and call
+Sardou.'
+
+Juliette tripped out like a stage soubrette, demurely pert from crown
+to sole. Possibly--just possibly--she guessed; probably she guessed
+nothing. The suggestion was no more than a suggestion in the mind of the
+watcher of all these bygone scenes.
+
+Paul rose, but Gertrude waved him back.
+
+'Not yet,' she whispered, 'not yet.'
+
+He sat down again, his senses all awhirl with the aching desire he had
+to hold her in his arms.
+
+'You must not allow Sardou's masterpiece to grow cold,' said Gertrude;
+and Juliette came tripping back again, with the grave man at her heels.
+'You will take this to the post,' said Madame la Baronne, indicating
+the letter on the salver the maid carried. 'You will see it registered
+personally, and bring me the receipt.'
+
+The grave man bowed, and retired, letter in hand.
+
+'You like your coffee, Mr. Armstrong? And, oh, Juliette, bring to me
+that last little portfolio of watercolour drawings. You know where you
+will find them?'
+
+'But, yes, Madame la Baronne, but they were locked in the escritoire.'
+
+'You will find the key,' said the Baroness, sipping her coffee, 'in my
+purse. Make haste, for M. Armstrong has but a moment to spare.'
+
+Juliette ran with a swirl of petticoats upstairs. Gertrude followed the
+footsteps with alert ear and eye. Ear and eye alike seemed to listen.
+She rose to her feet and stretched her arms with an imploring gesture.
+
+'Does this make amends to you?' she murmured. 'To me it atones for all'
+
+'No, no; be careful Mind my hair, you silly darling--mind my hair! Shall
+you be content to wait for this just now and then? Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul!
+how hard it is! Go now--go. Quickly! Sip your coffee, Paul, and try to
+look as little unnatural as you can. She is quicker than I fancied.
+I've always a cigar to offer a departing breakfast guest. Juliette, the
+cigars.'
+
+Juliette laid down the small portfolio she carried, and pricked away a
+third time.
+
+'You love me?' he said hoarsely.
+
+The sound of his own voice was in his ears, after everything that had
+happened.
+
+'I adore you!'she responded. 'You know it all now. But duty calls you
+one way and me another. And oh, Paul, "of love that never found its
+earthly close, what sequel?"'
+
+'The very words,' he cried, 'that ticked in my brain all night'
+
+'You must look at the portfolio,' she murmured. 'Est tu content de moi?
+
+'Je t'aime!' and with fumbling fingers he untied the strings of the
+portfolio.
+
+And now was Paul Armstrong the tame cat of Madame la Baronne de Wyeth,
+and earned his title well in many cities, from St Petersburg to Cadiz,
+and from London to Cairo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+It would appear that in the course of time Gertrude grew a little tired
+of Paul's ceaseless devotion. It is quite likely that she sometimes
+found him in the way, and she was deprived of her best conversational
+theme. It was of no use to try to revive the legend of the Isolated Soul
+any longer, because of the frequent and earnest confession which had
+been made of the final discovery of a spiritual rapport absolute and
+complete. Paul and his angel had lived on terms of so much intimacy that
+they had earned the right to be acidulous with each other upon occasion.
+Her pruderies and her abandonments of prudery afforded between them an
+atmosphere as unwholesome as it was easily possible for a man of
+fervent temperament to live in. Work of the hard and healthful sort was
+practically abandoned. There was a good deal of verse-turning done, and
+an anonymous volume of sonnets entitled 'Dialogues of the Soul' made a
+momentary splash on the surface of the literary deep, and then sank like
+a pebble to the bottom. The book distilled a faint odour of eroticism,
+a scent of the epicene; but the degenerates, sniffing it, thought poorly
+of it because of its want of downright rancidity, and the people of
+whom crowds are made misliked it for a better reason. Paul, with a
+diminishing exchequer, found himself aware of the first flat literary
+failure of his lifetime.
+
+The exchequer failed rapidly, and there were several contributory
+reasons. In the first place, the Baroness had any amount of money to
+spend, and it was essential that anyone who aspired to follow her about
+the capitals of Europe on equal terms should live at a high rate. Then,
+Annette had proclaimed her rights of freedom, and had escaped from
+Laurent and his forces, and had run up bills in Paris, and in London,
+and elsewhere. The most successful of comedies will pass out of vogue.
+To be idle, to be extravagant in one's own person, and to be milked
+perpetually by the extravagance of another--could better ways to ruin be
+discovered?
+
+The two had their first real tiff at Naples on a Christmas Eve. Gertrude
+had set up a sheep-dog in the person of one Mrs. Diedrich, a sour and
+sallow remnant of New England fashion and beauty, a lady who both on her
+husband's side and her own claimed all the splendours of Knickerbocker
+descent. The husband was dead, the fortune--except for a meagre bone or
+two with little meat thereon--was eaten all away. Mrs. Diedrich and the
+sympathetic Gertrude's mother had been friends. There was nothing more
+natural or more befitting than that the wealthy Baroness de Wyeth should
+find an asylum for this superannuated slave of fortune, though Paul knew
+perfectly well that she was no more than a buckler against scandal at
+the first. But reasonable as he was compelled to admit such a precaution
+to be, he was not very long in discovering that the impoverished lady
+was a buckler against himself, and that she was used to prevent that
+old familiar laying of heads together, and the old familiar communion of
+hearts, in which, by dint of careful manoeuvring, a bare sixty seconds
+might sometimes he snatched for a solitude of two.
+
+There should have been a drive that afternoon--Gertrude and Paul, with
+Mrs. Diedrich to play gooseberry--and Mrs. Diedrich had fallen ill. Paul
+presented himself at the appointed hour, and no Gertrude was there to
+meet him. Instead of the Presence a note couched in the chilliest terms:
+
+'Dear Friend,
+
+'Mrs. Diedrich is shockingly unwell to-day, and I cannot leave her.
+Profoundest regrets for a lost pleasure.
+
+'Sincerely, 'G. de W.'
+
+'My luck!' said Paul bitterly to himself; for he had been more than once
+disappointed of late. But he found grace enough to express his sorrow,
+send his compliments and good wishes, and to withdraw. He went strolling
+about in unknown ways, with all manner of unpleasant things to think of.
+He not only made his momentary disappointment the greatest of them all,
+but strove to make it so. And yet the others would intrude. Here was a
+letter from Darco expressing grave disappointment with the end of the
+second act of their latest piece. Darco coughing up his stammering
+gutturals as a speaker of English was one man, and Darco with a pen in
+his hand was another.
+
+'It crumbles,' wrote the critic, 'at the very instant at which it should
+triumph. It is vague, unconvincing, wrong. You leave me unanswered for
+six whole weeks, and at the end you send me this incoherent sandheap,
+when your promises had given me the right to expect a solid piece of
+well-worked marble. I do not know whether you are well or ill, whether
+you desire to continue the work or no. All of which I am certain is that
+the piece is wanted for March, and that we cannot work together at
+this distance. I will meet you where you like--Paris, Brussels, Vienna,
+London, Hong Kong. It is all one to me so long as I get you back to work
+in time. But, for whatever reason, this second act is so written that
+it will not do. And I cannot wait I am a poet, but I am a poet without
+a language. If you will not be my interpreter, I must find another. Is
+friendship friendship, or is business business? In the name of both I
+ask you to meet me and to work with me.'
+
+Look at it how he would, and distort his own perspective as he might,
+Darco's angry and outspoken appeal was larger than anything his duty to
+Gertrude might ask of him. But, to tell the whole truth, his sense
+of duty was his curse, because the sense itself had grown distorted.
+Because of some rooted infirmity of character, he must needs be true
+to the ideal which least merited truth. He saw this fact throughout his
+career. He had bowed at foolish shrines. Gertrude--oh yes, Gertrude was
+impeccable. But just as he was wasting the heart of ardent manhood now,
+he had wasted the heart of youth and the heart of boyhood The career was
+all of a piece. Born to be fooled, whether by a village coquette, or
+his own loftiest, or his own lowest, or by practised _femme de feu_ and
+_femme de glace_ in one--always born to be fooled, frustrated, enticed
+to the throwing away of real passion and of real power.
+
+And over and above all these, arrange them in what imaginary perspective
+he might choose, the sordid side of things, the bills--bills from
+lodging-house keepers of the better sort, from hotels, from milliners,
+and from modistes--and the shrinking exchequer, which barely, when all
+claims were satisfied, would leave him so much as two hundred and fifty
+pounds.
+
+What had his year and a half of dalliance brought him? A dream of
+pleasure, a desert ache of hunger, an occasional delirious spur to
+appetite. Now, what in the name of common-sense is the good of it
+all? And is Gertrude any better, after all, than an innocent Delilah,
+trapping no Samson, but a fool unmuscled, who has no strength to break
+the weakest of her withes? Innocent Delilah! He never profaned her in
+his thought.
+
+But in this mood--with his conscience, literary-artistic and simply
+human, entirely endorsing old Darco's reproof of his work and his
+evasions; with a financial crevasse at his feet, and Annette chopping
+away his standing-place, and his own extravagances melting his foothold
+like butter in the sun; with a barren future staring him in the face--he
+was disposed alike to remorse and penitence.
+
+The city in which he rambled was strange to him, and, according to his
+fashion when absorbed in thought, he took any turning which suggested
+itself, and lost himself in a labyrinth of byways. He had done the same
+kind of thing in a hundred towns and cities without any result worth
+mentioning, but just for once he was destined to find a purpose wrapped
+up in the folds of this simple habit.
+
+He was plodding along miserably enough, and did not know whether he were
+at Naples or the North Pole, when a familiar voice awoke him from his
+bitter reveries, and he looked about him to discover that he was between
+a high wall and & hedge of aloes on a strip of grass which had no
+pathway on it, and apparently led nowhere. He had a vague idea that he
+had set out in this direction upon a footpath more or less distinct, and
+making a _volte-face_, he saw that the path had come to a termination at
+a door in the high wall a wicket's length behind him.
+
+The voice he had heard was the voice of Gertrude, and the words it had
+spoken were: 'Ah! but my dear friend, that inevitable, that unceasing
+isolation of the mind!'
+
+A swift pang of jealousy ran through him, and he listened with an almost
+fierce anxiety. There was nothing in his nature to induce him to play
+the eavesdropper, but he could not have refrained from listening just
+then had it been to save his soul. Some deep undetermined murmur of a
+voice in answer seemed to reach his ears, but they were drumming so to
+the startled music of his heart that his sense failed to record it.
+He went back swiftly and stealthily to the spot at which the pathway
+terminated, and there he found an old green-painted door in a small
+archway in the wall. It half drooped upon its rusty hinges, and across
+the gap it left between its own rim and the postern, he had view enough
+to tell him whither his rambling footsteps had led him. He was looking
+at the terraced gardens in the rear of the Baroness's hotel, and whilst
+he looked Gertrude herself floated into sight. Some trifle of a lace
+mantilla was thrown over her head, and in her right hand she balanced
+a parasol daintily between thumb and finger. Her companion was a man
+apparently of middle age, frock-coated, silk-hatted, booted and gloved
+as if for Rotten Row. He bore himself with an air of distinction, and
+the looker-on saw the gloved hand caress a big moustache of sweeping
+silver. The owner of the moustache was bending over the Baroness with
+an unmistakable air of gallant attention, and Paul's blood boiled
+within him. He had no real sense of the impulse which moved him, and no
+calculation as to what might happen; but he pushed the door aside, and,
+entering the garden, walked along the gravelled main path which led to
+the hotel. He made a feint of holding his head straight, and of looking
+neither to left nor right, but he watched Gertrude and her companion
+with a keen sidelong glance. His brisk footstep set a pebble rolling
+in the pathway, and a second later he heard his own name called. A
+low-growing orange-tree, all lustrous with globes of green and gold and
+shiny leafage, had intercepted his view of the pair for just the instant
+which intervened between the sound and the call.
+
+'Mr. Armstrong,' said Gertrude's voice, 'Mr. Armstrong!' He turned in a
+pretence of amazement, and, hat in hand, crossed a small space of turf.
+
+'I had just sent round to you,' said the smiling little lady, 'at your
+hotel.' She transferred the parasol to her left hand, and held out the
+right in an almost effusive greeting. 'I suppose you have not been back
+yet?'
+
+'No,' Paul answered. 'I have been walking and had lost myself, until I
+recognised the garden through the open door yonder. Then I made sure of
+myself again, and thought I might secure a short-cut home.'
+
+'How fortunate!' said Gertrude, smiling; 'and how curious, too!' she
+added. 'At the very moment at which I caught sight of you your name
+was in my mind. Are you a believer in the Aura, Colonel Brunton--the
+something which envelops personality and diffuses itself in such a
+manner that you recognise a friend's presence before you are made aware
+of it by sight or hearing? Don't you recognise the reality of those
+things? But, oh, I forgot! You gentlemen are, I am afraid, strangers
+to each other. This is Colonel Brunton, our great traveller in the
+Himalayas and Thibet, and this is Mr. Paul Armstrong, the author of
+I dare not say how many charming books and comedies--Mr. Darco's
+collaborateur.'
+
+'Whose work,' said Colonel Brunton in a voice typically American, but
+profoundly deep, 'I have, bafore my trip to Asia, seen performed with a
+splendid eclaw both in London and New York. I am proud to meet you, Mr.
+Armstrong.'
+
+He was a rugged man, brown as a sun-burned brick, with a cascading
+moustache of silver, jet-black eyebrows, and eyes which danced defiance
+at his gray hairs and wrinkles. Paul could do no less than accept the
+hearty hand he offered, and Gertrude set herself to soothe him.
+
+'You know,' she said, laying her finger-tips upon his arm, 'you are a
+very inattentive cavalier, Mr. Armstrong. Poor Mrs. Diedrich was taken
+ill so suddenly and alarmingly that I had time to do no more than just
+to scribble that little hasty note to you. You might at least have
+paused to make inquiry.'
+
+'That would never have done,' said Paul 'One does not inquire into a
+lady's decision at any moment.'
+
+He spoke with a capital assumption of gaiety, but to the keen instinct
+of that experienced trifler with hearts it was an assumption only,
+and Gertrude turned the question with the easy skill of a woman of the
+world.
+
+'Those geological researches now,' she said, with a charming air of
+mocking schoolgirl ignorance about such matters. 'Do you really mean
+to tell me that right away in the Himalayas you found the same little
+protozoic blot in the same limestone that you find in our own Andes? Has
+that little creature really built the mountains of the world? Why, it is
+the story of the Coral Islands over again; but on what an enormous scale,
+'Dear me, what creatures of a day we are!'
+
+Colonel Brunton, who, as it appeared, was a member of many learned
+societies, and a most indefatigable besieger of the world's inaccessible
+places, turned out to be a man of so much simplicity, sincerity, and
+charm, and Gertrude drew him to his best so skilfully, that it was not
+easy to be sulky for a long time together in his society. It was Paul's
+cue to disguise himself as far as possible, and this delightful American
+helped him greatly. He could barely think of the man as a rival; he was
+so very upright, downright complimentary.
+
+'Why, Lord!' he said once in the course of that afternoon's talk, 'when
+you were in short frocks, and I was over head and ears in love with
+you----'
+
+The Baroness snatched a fan which girdled her, and tapped him with it
+reprovingly.
+
+'Well,' he said, twinkling, 'when all is said and done, habit is the
+conqueror. I got into that habit when you were a baby: twenty years ago,
+I'll swear, though it's not legitimate, I know, to guess a lady's age.
+I've found a new habit since--a Satanic habit--of going to and fro about
+the earth, and roaming up and down on it, but I have never forgotten the
+old one.'
+
+The Baroness laughed and made fun of this proclamation, which was
+accompanied by certain old-fashioned bows and flourishes of deportment.
+
+'But now,' she said, 'I must really run away and look after my patient,
+and must leave you, gentlemen, to console each other for my loss. I left
+Mrs. Diedrich asleep, and could just afford to snatch half an hour for
+so old a friend as you, Colonel If you care to come back and have tea
+with me at six, I shall be glad to meet you, if I may dare run away
+again. But if I _should_ be compelled to send down my excuses, you will
+understand.'
+
+She had already started a movement towards the hotel, and the two men
+sauntered along with her, one on either side. She left them in the
+flower-perfumed dimness of the shaded hall, and the whole business of
+the afternoon had by this time so explained and reconciled itself to
+Paul's mind that he would have been a brute to fret about it longer.
+
+'I say,' said the Colonel, 'I have been for three years outside
+civilization, and I should like a John Collins. I came here last night
+by the Messagerie Maritime. They are good people, and they cook as well
+as anybody can be expected to cook outside the United States, but
+their ideas of drink are curiously simple. Can you be my guide, Mr.
+Armstrong?'
+
+'Need I guide you farther?' asked Paul 'I should fancy that your
+materials are to be found here in an absurd plenty, and if you have a
+skilful hand----'
+
+'Sir,' said the Colonel, with a burlesque flourish, interrupting him,
+'there is not a man from Marble Head to the Golden Gate who can make a
+John Collins to compare with mine.'
+
+Paul knew the house, and led his new acquaintance to a shady veranda
+where a polyglot waiter chipped his ice to his fancy, found him lemon,
+pounded sugar, fresh mint, square-faced Hollands, and syphon-water, and
+left the Colonel compounding in a high state of content.
+
+'This is like home,' he said, 'bar the celestial straw, the use of which
+these blahsted Continentals have not learned. This is quite like home.
+Three years I have been roughing it, up hill and down dale, camp and
+field Seen a little bit o'fightin' on the Burmah side 'long of your
+British troops.
+
+Mr. Armstrong; better boys I do _not_ want to meet And here's to them
+and you, sir. But, Lord!'--he caressed his tumbler with a lean brown
+hand, and looked contemplatively into space--'I must smoke. Try a
+Burmese cigarette, sir. Lord 'I land here last night after three years.
+I just break my journey on the way to London, and I run against the
+little girl that broke my heart when I was fifteen years of age, and
+broke it again when I was one-and-twenty, and would just go on breaking
+it for the mere fun of the thing for the next million years, if she and
+me could only live as long.'
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Paul, in a cold insolence which made him
+hot to think of a thousand times later, 'have you been drinking?'
+
+'Well, I guess,' said Mr. Brunton, and, leaning back in his deck-chair,
+drew a great volume of smoke into his lungs, expelled it in a cloud, and
+laughed; 'after a three years' drought, the man who is not game to
+drink deserves to go dry. But, by Heaven, sir, to strike up against that
+mighty little flirt after a space of fifteen years--to come across it
+all again by accident! Look here! I land out of the _Grande Marie de
+Luxembourg_ at Naples, with no more idea of revivin' old times than of
+escapin' into the next century, and who's the first person that I
+meet but little Gertie, and what's the first word that I hear but the
+isolation of the soul!'
+
+Paul sat in a chill, tense agony.
+
+'I was,' said the Colonel, growing more and more clearly articulate in
+accordance with his needs, 'about as full up as any Christian need be
+when I landed, and I was going to bed like a clean Christian gentleman.
+Then I ran up against Gertie. I have been Turkish bathed, I have been
+sluiced and washed and shaved and perfumed, and I can stand and talk
+straight. What do you say? What would you have said about me amongst
+the oranges and lemons in the garden there?' He sat up in a momentary
+fierceness. 'Am I intoxicated, or, at least, was I till I turned
+the lock-gate winch and set the waters foaming? No, sir, but in that
+profoundly philosophic observation of life your works declare you will
+have observed the state in which a man becomes drunk-sober.
+
+He brims over after that stage. That I allow. He brims over, sir--he
+brims over, sir. If it is of any humorous value to you to make
+observations of the present case, _I_ am brimming over, sir.'
+
+The clean-cut, travel-hardened, sun-stained man was slipping from his
+original place in Paul's mind, like a statue built in clay too soft to
+support its own weight. He slipped at the chin, at the mouth, at
+the base of the nostril, at the eyebrow, and yet, in spite of these
+deflections from the original, he appeared to recover himself with
+an extraordinary swiftness at moments, and to be again the alert,
+adventurous creature of the woods and wilds his extraordinary career
+proclaimed him.
+
+It was in a moment of supreme sobriety that he touched Paul's arm and
+said:
+
+'I'll tell you all about little Gertie right away.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+The Colonel's capacity for the holding of liquid substances looked
+abnormal even to a man of Paul's experience.
+
+'Thirst is now assuaged,' he said solemnly at the end of his third deep
+tumbler, 'and a man may begin to enjoy himself. There ought to be a boy
+here who can make a cocktail.'
+
+He kept the boy fairly busy, and he talked. He had recovered himself
+curiously, and there was now no more than a hint of coming intoxication
+in his eye and in his voice. It seemed as if he had arrived at a settled
+stage, and was able to make a longish stay there.
+
+'You're pretty thick with our little friend, ain't you?' he asked,
+rolling round in his seat.
+
+'If you are speaking of the lady who left us a little while ago----'
+
+'Why, certainly,' said the Colonel.
+
+'I have the honour of her friendship,' said Paul with an icy air.
+
+The Colonel was no longer smoking, but he chewed the end of his cigar
+with a lazy appetite, and he smiled.
+
+'Funny little devil she is,' he said contemplatively. 'Women are odd,
+however you take 'em; but she's odder than odd. By God, sir, she's
+odder than Dick's hat-band! I suppose she wants me to believe that she's
+forgotten how I bowled her out years ago. Soul! Heart 'It was before she
+got married. She made me believe that I was the only man she ever came
+across who had either. There were twenty-three of us met in New York
+City, and we had a dinner on the strength of it. I was that mad, sir, at
+the time, I drummed up the whole contingent. I believe that evening
+left some of us a little sore, but it cured us, and little Gertie had
+three-and-twenty play-fellows the fewer next morning. And I'm damned if
+she didn't open fire on me again in the first half-hour after all these
+years. It's funny, ain't it?'
+
+'I am afraid I must bid you good-afternoon, sir,' said Paul. 'And if you
+will permit a stranger to intrude in your affairs, I would suggest that
+you should make that cocktail your last.'
+
+'Wha-at?' asked the Colonel, placidly smiling, and eating his cigar.
+'Should we have made it four-and-twenty if you had been in Noo Yawk City
+at the time of that banquet.'
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' Paul answered stiffly. 'I don't care to
+continue this conversation, and I will take the liberty to end it.'
+
+'I say,' said the Colonel, 'wait there. I never began a quarrel in my
+life, Mr. Armstrong, but I have ended--lemme see----' He began to count
+upon his fingers with an inward look. 'I have ended eight,' he said.
+
+'Do you wish to quarrel now?' Paul demanded.
+
+'Why, no, sir, no,' said the Colonel; 'I am a man of peace. But when you
+presoom, sir, to dictate what a man shall drink, and when you presoom
+to object to the theme upon which he chooses to converse--why, don't you
+see?'
+
+'No,' said Paul, 'I do not see. If you choose to renew this conversation
+to-morrow, that is my hotel, and I shall be pleased to meet you there at
+any hour before noon.'
+
+'Now,' the Colonel answered, taking him by the sleeve in alcoholic
+friendship, 'you are becoming shirty, and your tone is warlike. And
+that, Mr. Armstrong, is unreasonable. Perhaps you know now that I am an
+old traveller. I'm a little bit of an explorer, sir, and I have never
+objected to being guided over a bit of country that I didn't know, if
+I happened to meet a man that knew it Now, that's enough said, Mr.
+Armstrong. If you find my conversation distasteful, just damn my eyes
+and go. But don't you let me hear you. You can curse outside to your
+heart's content, and, you see, that needn't breed a quarrel.'
+
+'Very well,' said Paul. The Solemn drunken man made him laugh in spite
+of his own anger and bewildered misery of mind. 'Whatever cursing I may
+have to do shall be done outside.'
+
+'Good,' the Colonel answered, and having by this time eaten his cigar to
+its burned ash, he ejected the remnant and permitted Paul to escape.
+
+As he came out upon the mild widespread sunshine of the street at the
+close of the afternoon, he seemed to realize himself for the first time
+in his whole life. He did not trouble himself to curse the Colonel,
+but he cursed Paul Armstrong soundly, and, striding rapidly towards his
+hotel, resolved on instant action. He mounted to his own room, and there
+he wrote a letter.
+
+'I must see you,' it ran, 'and I must see you to-day. I must catch
+to-morrow's train for London, and I cannot guess when I may be able to
+return. I have neglected both work and business too long, and I must
+shake myself awake. On the whole, perhaps the kindest and best thing you
+could do for me would be to send me away for good and all. I have lived
+in a fool's dream too long.'
+
+There was much more, but this was the gist of it, and the writer sealed
+and despatched it, not daring to tempt himself to a new effort by
+reading it over. The answer reached him in an hour:
+
+'What is it, my poor friend, which has so disturbed you as to prompt you
+to the writing of such a letter as I have just received? I had thought
+myself safe in counting upon your esteem. If you are really called to
+London by affairs of urgency, I must not keep you, and, of course, I
+should be hurt if you went without telling me good-bye. It happens that
+I have engaged to dine at table-d'hote tonight with passing friends, but
+I shall be free at ten o'clock. Ask for me then.'
+
+Paul had been conscious and jealous of a good many small rivalries since
+he and the Baroness had first set up that platonic communion of soul
+in which they had now lived so long, but on the whole he had to confess
+that Gertrude had acted with complete discretion in these matters,
+and he had been repeatedly forced to admit to himself that he had been
+unable to find any real ground for his tremors. He had never once felt
+himself in actual danger of being deposed from his position of high
+priest in that ridiculous temple. When a man is in love with a woman, he
+cannot be expected to judge her actions or her meaning wisely, and the
+Baroness's platonics, with the little flashes of earthly fire in amongst
+them here and there, had always seemed to him to indicate a nature
+throbbing with fervour which was held in restraint only by a delicacy of
+equal charm and beauty, and a lofty moral sense. But he was easily open
+to the influence of other men's opinions, and he had never been able to
+think of Ralston's smile without an inward twinge which had sometimes
+amounted to an actual tenor. Suppose he were merely being played with
+by a heartless woman, who found it minister to her vanity to have him
+perpetually dangling at her heels in public and burning incense in
+private before her day by day? Suppose he were throwing away the best
+and freshest years of his manhood in the pursuit of such a mocking
+shadow? These, of course, were a sort of lover's blasphemies against his
+idol, and he resented them with all his heart and soul, exactly as any
+other worshipper would resent the insinuations of the devil against the
+powers and perfections of his deity. His resentment could not lead
+him to oblivion, and his memory of Ralston's humorous and mischievous
+enjoyment was with him often. And now came this American man, this
+boozing Colonel, with none of Ralston's reticence, and apparently with
+none of his respect for the character of a lady whom he had known long
+and well, and the coarser accusation travelled on the same lines as the
+other, and only differed from it in going a good deal further.
+
+'I will know to-night,' Paul said to himself savagely a hundred times
+in the course of that afternoon and evening, and when at length the
+slow hours had rolled themselves on to the time of his appointment,
+he presented himself in the vestibule of the Baroness's hotel in a
+condition of tragic resolve.
+
+Gertrude was there in the very act of saying farewell to her _passagere_
+American friends, and he thought to himself, with as much of anger as
+admiration, that he had never seen her look altogether so charming
+as she did at that instant. The vivacity of colouring which commonly
+distinguished her was softened, and the unaccustomed pallor of her face
+lent a tender softness to her whole aspect. Her eyes, too, had lost
+something of their brilliance, and seemed faintly humid. He could have
+sworn that she had been crying, but when she turned to meet him after
+the departure of her friends, there was a gentle sparkle of welcome in
+her face, and she held out her beautiful jewelled little hand with a
+charming frankness.
+
+'I am so glad you are here,' she said, 'and I was so much afraid that
+those dear tiresome people were going to overstay their time, and that I
+should have to keep you waiting.'
+
+She had a hooded opera-cloak thrown over her left arm, and she held
+this out to him, and turned away so that he might adjust it about her
+shoulders.
+
+'It is a lovely night,' she said, 'like a night in our Indian summer in
+dear old Massachusetts. Let us talk in the garden, Paul.'
+
+He walked by her side, still half saturnine, but in part conquered
+already by the soft seduction of her voice and face. He did not speak a
+word until they reached the garden terrace, and then only in answer to
+her question:
+
+'You must really go, Paul?'
+
+'Yes,' he answered gloomily, 'I must really go.'
+
+For the season of the year it was a wonderful night even for Naples.
+The air was like balm, and was loaded with the scent of flowers. Lights
+twinkled here and there about the garden, and the moon shone broad and
+bright almost at the zenith, half drowning the lustre of the stars in
+the haze of light it spread. Scattered about the gardens were a dozen
+parties, more or less, all chattering gaily, and here and there disposed
+to frolic Their presence jarred on Paul, but there was no removing it He
+allowed Gertrude to lead the way, and she; strolling in pensive silence,
+brought him to a shaded avenue on the western side of the garden, where
+a gentleman and lady were promenading slowly arm-in-arm away from them.
+Gertrude laid a hand upon his arm, and stood still until the couple in
+front had strayed out of hearing, and then resumed her pensive march.
+
+'How came you, Paul,' she asked, looking suddenly up to him, 'to write
+so strange a letter?'
+
+'I had to write it,' Paul answered in a constricted voice, in which a
+certain note of anger sounded. It disturbed him to find that his resolve
+was melting away from him, and he felt that he must needs harden his
+heart if be were but partly to fulfil his purpose. 'What is there in the
+letter,' he asked therefore, 'which you find strange?
+
+'You have never told me,' she responded, 'one word of your purpose until
+this afternoon, and you are leaving me tomorrow. Is not that a little
+strange, Paul?'
+
+Her voice trembled and almost broke upon his name.
+
+'I knew nothing of it myself until yesterday,' he answered 'I have had
+letters of the most urgent importance, and must answer them in person.'
+
+'How long do you expect to be away,' she asked.
+
+'The one wise thing,' he answered, 'I could do would be to stay away
+altogether.'
+
+'Ah, Paul,' she half whispered, wreathing her arm through his, 'there
+is your "fool's dream" again. What do you mean by the "fool's dream"?
+Haven't we been happy for a time?'
+
+'Is it happiness,' Paul asked, 'to pay for a week's emptiness and
+longing with one minute of delirium? Is it a happy thing to be so set
+on one unattainable hope as to be able, dreaming or waking, to think of
+nothing else? A man is not to be made happy by the life I live.'
+
+'Paul,' she whispered, 'what more can you ask than I have given you?'
+
+'Everything,' he answered.
+
+She drew her arm away lingeringly. He let it go, and for a minute they
+walked in silence side by side. They reached the avenue, and turned back
+again.
+
+'Can you tell me anything,' she asked after this pause--'do you care to
+tell me anything about your business in England.'
+
+'That's simple enough,' he answered. 'I am within some few months of
+poverty, and I must get to work again. I have had a tremendous letter
+from old Darco, slanging me for breach of faith, and for having sent him
+a piece of intolerably bad work. I have deserved every word he has to
+say, and now I must make amends to him.'
+
+'You have not been fortunate in your work lately?'she asked.
+
+'I have not been fortunate,' he answered; 'I have been so far from
+fortunate that' I have been writing like an untrained schoolboy. I could
+have done better before I was fifteen.'
+
+'But why is that? she asked. 'Your mind should only just now be
+ripening. Your time is all your own.'
+
+'There is not one minute of my time my own,' he answered in a
+smouldering wrathfulness.
+
+'Why not?' she questioned.
+
+'Come,' said Paul, 'isn't that just a little disingenuous? Don't you
+know why not? Here am I,' he went on, 'as I do most solemnly believe,
+as madly in love as ever man was in the history of the world; petted,
+encouraged, and caressed, and ignored, and repulsed, until in the insane
+weakness of my own nature I have let all manhood ooze out of me. I am
+unlike Hamlet, my dear Gertrude. I am both to be fretted and played
+upon.'
+
+'Played upon?' she said reproachfully.
+
+'Played upon,' he repeated with what sounded like a weighty
+deliberation.
+
+Gertrude began to cry, and set a dainty handkerchief to her eyes, but
+she said nothing, and Paul's only resource was to go on talking, to keep
+himself in sight of his own injuries.
+
+'You and I made a bargain, Gertrude: we were to be friends, and no
+more than friends. You have known all along how much it cost me to
+keep within those limits; and have you helped me? I put that to your
+conscience.'
+
+'Helped you?' she asked, pausing once more in her walk, and looking up
+at him in an innocent bewilderment.
+
+'Helped me,' he repeated stonily. 'The words are plain enough.'
+
+There was a garden-seat near at hand. She hastened to it, and sinking
+down upon it, seemed to surrender herself to tears. He moved moodily
+after her, and stood looking down at the pathway, tracing haphazard
+figures on its moss-grown surface with the cane he carried.
+
+'I understand you now,' sobbed Gertrude. 'I have a right to reproach
+myself because my own undisciplined heart has gone beyond control
+sometimes; but does it lie in your province, Paul, to blame me for that?
+Have I not an equal right,' she went on, 'to tell you that you have not
+helped me in the daily struggle I have had to make? You are unjust, you
+are ungenerous. I could never have believed it of you.'
+
+'I can foresee nothing,' Paul said, 'but misery.'
+
+'Nor can I,' she answered. She rose and faced him, and in the patch of
+moonlight in which she stood he could see that her tears at least were
+real. 'What you have to say to me, in effect,' she said, with an air
+of sudden quiet dignity, but with a quiver in her voice, 'is just this:
+that I am a heartless coquette, and have never cared for you; that I
+have wilfully lured you on to your own unhappiness. If you really
+think that, Paul, if it means anything more than a mere passing gust
+of temper, we had better say good-bye at once. I have at least an equal
+right to bring the same charge against you, but I should disdain to
+harbour such a thought about you. There are many ways in which you may
+be cruel to a woman, Paul, and be forgiven, but you must not wound
+her pride in that way. That is the cruellest stab of all. The blade is
+poisoned, dear, and the wound will rankle for a lifetime.'
+
+'Tell me,' he said, with his eyes blazing upon her, and the guarded
+voice in which he spoke shaking--'tell me that you have really cared
+for me; tell me, on your conscience and your honour, that you have not
+deliberately led me to this madness.'
+
+'You can ask me that? she said. 'You can insult me so?'
+
+'I ask it,' he responded.
+
+'If my conduct has not shown it clearly,' said Gertrude, 'it is quite in
+vain to protest. I have given you better proof than words.'
+
+'There is only one proof,' Paul answered. 'Are you strong enough to
+brave the world with me?'
+
+'No, no,' she whispered; 'you must not ask me that I am not afraid of
+the world, but I am afraid of my own conscience.'
+
+'Do you think,' he asked passionately, 'that love could not sanctify a
+union such as ours? Be my Georges Sand, and I will be your De Musset; be
+my Stella, and I will be your Swift.'
+
+'You choose your instances unfortunately, Mr. Armstrong,' Gertrude
+answered. 'Georges and Alfred lived to write vile and bitter books about
+each other, and Stella broke her heart under the despotism of a brute. I
+do not care for such a prospect.'
+
+The 'Mr. Armstrong 'lashed him like an actual whip, and under the sting
+of it he barely followed the meaning of what came after. He was so
+staggered that he could only repeat the words:
+
+'Mr. Armstrong.'
+
+'You force me to my defence,' she answered gently. 'I am a woman, Paul;
+but I have my code of honour.'
+
+'Im Gott's und Teufel's namen,' he groaned, 'what is it? You give me
+lips and arms; you have sworn you love me. What is loyalty?'
+
+She drew herself to her full height:
+
+'I do not pretend to define loyalty,' she said; 'but I know it when I
+see it. It may be less definite than insult; but the last, at least, is
+clearly outlined. I have been mistaken, and I will correct my error now.
+Good-bye, Mr. Armstrong.'
+
+'Good-bye,' said Paul.
+
+She lingered for a mere instant as if in expectation of some further
+adieu, but he had none to offer. He saw no more clearly now into the
+truth than he had done at the beginning of the interview, but he had in
+a measure hardened himself by the spoken definition of his own attitude,
+and, partly because he could not as yet retreat from it, he permitted
+her to go without another word She floated away in the alternate soft
+splendour of the moon and the deep shadow of the overhanging boughs, and
+he watched her gloomily until her figure disappeared at the end of the
+avenue. He stood for a minute or two with a vacant mind, digging his
+walking-cane into the dry, friable earth at his feet, and scoring the
+thin, scum-like growth of moss upon it with unmeaning lines. Then he lit
+a cigar, and, avoiding the crowded vestibule, skirted the dark western
+wall of the hotel, and so walked homeward. The thing was done now, and,
+whether it were rightly done or wrongly he cared very little for the
+moment He stood at one of those pauses of emotion in which the mind is
+able logically to balance pros and cons without the intervention of any
+gust of feeling. If Gertrude were really what she professed to be, he
+had acted with great cruelty. If she were not what she professed to be,
+he had acted with great wisdom for the first time in his life so far as
+the woman as protagonist was concerned He looked at the probabilities on
+both sides with a cynical coolness which would have been impossible to
+him at any earlier stage in his career. He had met but two men who had
+known the Baroness de Wyeth well, and they had both looked upon her from
+pretty much the same standpoint. Ralston's view was the more genial, but
+even in his opinion she was a born flirt, a creature who loved to tyre
+her chariot-wheels with hearts; and in the view of the coarser mind she
+was a coquette mere and simple--a Queen Rabesqurat, who kept a sackful
+of the human eyes which had turned to her in adoration. Then, in spite
+of momentary indifference, his nerves tingled and his blood sparkled at
+the memory of that rare and fleeting instant at which she had seemed to
+surrender herself to his embraces, and to make him immortal with a kiss.
+All the same, he could look on that fine second's immortality with a
+cold indifference when the thrill was over. Granted the very lowest
+scale for passion, could the thing be real? Could he, for example, have
+stayed the torrent of his own blood in full course? He laughed to think
+of it, and a line and a half of his favourite poet sang in his brain:
+
+'And thy passions matched with mine Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and
+as water unto wine.'
+
+On the whole he began to conceive that he had done rightly, and in that
+half-belief, which drew slowly towards conviction, he went to bed and
+slept in a stolidity which surprised him later. The fact was that he was
+less resolved than tired.
+
+Whilst he was at his deepest sleep a thundering summons at his door
+aroused him. A dream which came between the first prelude to this
+orchestral drumming and his awaking had advised him of a fainter
+disturbance, but by the time he was fairly awake the knocking had grown
+so exigent that it bade fair to raise the house.
+
+'Come in I' he cried, and suddenly remembering that he had locked the
+door before getting into bed, he scrambled out in the darkness and
+turned back the key. 'What the devil is the matter here?' he asked, and
+the night porter of the hotel handed him a letter.
+
+'I was told, sir,'he said, in indifferent French, 'to deliver this at
+once, but the messenger is gone, and there is no answer called for.'
+
+There was light enough in the corridor to read by, and Paul recognised
+Gertrude's superscription.
+
+'Thank you,' he answered. 'Light the gas for me in my room, and that
+will do.'
+
+The man obeyed, bowed himself out, and went his way, closing the door
+behind him.
+
+The letter Paul held in his hand was bulky, and when he had broken
+the envelope open he found that it held no fewer than seven sheets of
+Gertrude's crested paper. They were all covered in a hasty and sprawling
+hand, and on the first page was a scrawled date and a 'Sir' which had
+been written with so much energy that the upward sweeping course of the
+pen had bespattered the whole white surface with inky dots of greater or
+less magnitude.
+
+'I had thought you my friend,' the epistle began; 'you have professed
+to be something more, and, as 'have heard you say, the greater should
+include the less.'
+
+There the writing suddenly changed in character, and the letter went on,
+as it were, in calmer and more measured cali-graphic accents.
+
+'How could you treat me so, knowing my friendship and even my foolish
+fondness? Was it not cruel to urge me as you did? I will confess to you
+what I have striven in vain to disguise. Had we met in earlier days, had
+I known you before I was bound in honour to the course I am compelled
+to run until my footsteps lead me to my grave, I might have been a
+happy woman. But a woman may love, and may yet place her honour before
+everything. I shall not care if, when I am dead and gone, you choose to
+boast that you won a woman's heart, and I will not even put you on
+your honour now to keep this silly secret; but you shall not go from me
+without my assurance of this one fact. When I married, marriage was to
+me a sacrament, and if it were not for that------ But no more of this,
+dear Paul Dear, dear, and dearest Paul! I hardly know how I am writing,
+but the anguish you have caused me is unspeakable, and I am not guarded
+in my words. A woman's heart may err, and her principle of honour may
+yet be strong. I bid you good-bye with an aching heart, and I wish you
+all good fortune. It would seem that our stars are in opposition to each
+other, and fighting against each other in their courses. I agree with
+you in thinking that we are best apart, but I shall watch your career
+with a more than sisterly devotion, and my heart tells me that I shall
+have the right to acclaim your future.'
+
+The letter said much more than this so far as the mere extension of the
+same sentiments might appear to be concerned, but in effect this was all
+until the final paragraph was reached.
+
+'I have adhered to duty,' this ran, 'and I will. Nothing--neither the
+thought of your suffering nor of my own--shall draw me from it, but I
+recognise none the less the kindred soul I should have met had I been
+fortunate--as I am far from being. Write this in your private memoirs
+of me: "She loved too well, yet wisely," and think sometimes that it is
+possible for a woman to feel sometimes like a man, and to think I "could
+not love thee, dear, so well, loved I not honour more."
+
+'I shall not add another word to this,' Gertrude concluded, 'except to
+say, I wish you all prosperity, all happiness. But just this remember
+always, that if I were a mischievous influence in your life, I meant it
+far otherwise, and I am always your devoted friend and well-wisher.
+
+'G. DEW.'
+
+For some reason or another by no means clear to himself the letter moved
+Paul less than it seemed to him that it should have done. He read it
+sitting in his pyjamas on the bedside, kicking his bare heels against
+the valance, and when he had done with it he tossed it on to the
+centre table, on which his manuscripts, now too rarely looked at, lay
+scattered, and said rather grimly:
+
+'Footlights.'
+
+Then he mused awhile, half desiring to confirm the word, and half
+recalling it. He had made many desperate efforts to be loyal in his
+thoughts, but he was less disposed to struggle in that direction than
+he had been. His mind strayed back to Ralston, and to the bibulous
+explorer. Memory went further than either of them, and carried him back
+to the days when he had broken his career in two for the sake of Miss
+Belmont, old Darco's Middle Jarley Prown.' He had played the flat
+traitor to Darco once already for the sake of one woman, and now, as
+he began to see, he was once more using him very ill for the sake of
+another. He sat kicking his heels against the valance of the bed,
+and thinking. May Gold, Norah MacMulty, the dreadful hour of the lost
+innocence, Claudia, Annette, Gertrude--what an incredible list of
+follies for one man to have committed! He grew intensely bitter and
+self-disdainful.
+
+There was no answer for the letter of the heart-wounded Gertrude. He
+was not quite sure whether he were a mere insensate brute or no, but
+he packed, and took the homeward train without a word of farewell. If
+Gertrude's friendship were a real thing, he was a beast unspeakable.
+If it were a selfish sentimental sham--why, then--anything. He began to
+taste life with a very nausea of weariness.
+
+But when London was reached, and the physical fatigue of travel shaken
+off, and the tornado of Darco's energies had engulfed him as of old,
+he found himself another man. Darco was terrible at their earliest
+interview.
+
+'Led me haf a look at you,' he said, dragging Paul to his study-window.
+'What haf you peen doing with yourseluf? I have known an Armstrong for
+some years who was rather a glever vellow. Vot? Ant now I gome agross an
+Armstrong who is a plithering impecile. Eh?'
+
+'Now, my dear Darco,'Paul answered, 'I dare say that your criticism of
+the stuff I sent you is quite just I haven't, indeed, the remotest doubt
+about it But I have been out of health and worried, and now I am here
+for work. You shall have the best I can give you.'
+
+'I shall speag to you,' said Darco, 'with an egsdreme blain-ness. I haf
+not forgotten our first parting. You did not dreat me well.'
+
+'I know I didn't,' Paul said.
+
+'Ant now,' continued Darco, refusing to be mollified all at once, 'you
+haf wasted months of valuable dime, ant you ant I are both the poorer
+by hundrets ant hundrets of pounts. I will haf your bromise, your sacred
+wort of honour, before I will gollaborate again, that you will no more
+blay with me these farces. I like you, yourself, Armstrong. I am very
+font of you. I haf a very creat atmiration for your worg. But you haf
+not been reliaple. You haf no right to resent what I am sayink.'
+
+'I have some excuses, of which I can't talk,' said Paul; 'but I don't
+resent what you are saying. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting. I
+promise you that you shall have all my time and all my best energies for
+this one spell of work in any case. After that----'
+
+'Veil,' said Darco, 'afder that?
+
+'Heaven knows!' Paul answered. 'Don't say any more just now, Darco. Let
+us go to work.'
+
+Darco looked at him for a second or two, and began then to stump about
+the room.
+
+'Goot! he said suddenly; 'let us go to work.'
+
+To work they went. Whatever else might be said for Darco, it was at
+least impossible to brood in his society. The man's tireless enthusiasm
+did one of two things for everybody with whom he encountered. It
+repelled either through terror or distaste, or it inspired a sentiment
+which corresponded with itself. He frightened timid people; he made the
+pugnacious angry and resentful. But here and there he kindled a fire.
+
+Paul's love for work had gone to sleep very soundly, but Darco's
+storming awoke it, and in a day or two the new remedy had got hold of
+him, and he came back to a moderately healthy state of mind. He wrote to
+Gertrude, and she responded, and a peace was patched between them, but
+it was not easy on either side to climb back to the old existence of
+confidence, and Paul at least was shaken in allegiance. Nor was this
+all, for he had begun to have some apprehension of his own character,
+and to take soundings of those emotional shallows which had always
+seemed to him so profound. When a man has once learned to distrust his
+own raptures they do not rise easily.
+
+He took up his quarters with Darco, and they worked all day together,
+and, on occasion, far into the night, for they were entered on a race
+against time, and an extended run of the piece which then held the stage
+at Darco's theatre meant loss. Act by act was put in rehearsal as
+it left the writers' hands, and the final scenes were written in the
+theatre itself, and the parts copied in one of the dressing-rooms. For
+the last fortnight of the work there was time to think of nothing
+else, and when the very tag was written there was labour enough left to
+satisfy even Darco.
+
+No better medicine for Paul's malady could have been prescribed than
+he found in this ceaseless mental occupation. It shook him out of
+his useless moonings, and brought his mind back to its old healthy
+elasticity, and when at last the decisive night came, and the play went
+with a roar from start to finish, he went to bed to sleep the clock
+round, and awoke to triumph.
+
+Out of an idea which had cropped up in the course of work, and had
+been abandoned as being too heavy to be employed as a mere episode, the
+indefatigable Darco had already constructed a new plot, and was fain to
+begin at once upon its development. But Paul insisted upon at least a
+fortnight's holiday, and carried his point. There was no further fear of
+financial embarrassment for many months to come. Annette's liabilities
+were paid. A lawyer was engaged to make settled arrangements with her,
+and for awhile there was a clear prospect and free air to breathe. Then
+came the new work, carried on at a less fiery pressure than the old, but
+yet pursued with diligence. It lasted six months, and was not likely
+to be in demand for another half-year. Gertrude was back in Paris,
+and thither went Paul, prepared to study the platonic theory in a more
+philosophical spirit than he had hitherto displayed. She was charming.
+She could not easily cease to be charm ing, but she maddened no longer,
+and if she had had a heart at all, her lover's extreme placidity might
+have piqued her into love. It could not do that, but it served to
+introduce upon the scene an episode of some humour.
+
+Madame la Baronne de Wyeth could not exist without an adorer. It was
+an agreeable thing enough to have two at a time, and would have been
+agreeable to have had a dozen had the creatures been manageable. Mr.
+Ricardo P. Janes, of Boston, Massachusetts, was a young man of excellent
+family connections, and in enjoyment of liberal means. He was a very
+handsome boy of four- or five-and-twenty, and having a taste for art and
+the Muses in general, he was studying in the atelier of a famous French
+painter. He took life seriously, and wrote nice verses. He was simple
+and enthusiastic, pure-minded and romantic, and altogether eligible as
+a candidate for a place in the list of Gertrude's soulful friends.
+When Paul reached Paris he had an immediate introduction to this young
+gentleman, and conceived a real liking for him. There was hardly an
+escape from the recognition of the fact that Mr. Janes, in his serious,
+romantic way, was in love with Gertrude, but it was evident that he had
+been held well in hand, and that with him the platonic path had strict
+barriers, beyond which he did not even aspire to pass. He made Paul his
+confidant when the two came to intimacy, as they very easily did; and
+from his simple talk the elder learned again a great deal of what he had
+learned already from Gertrude--how, for instance, there was a certain
+isolation of the soul from which it was impossible to escape even in the
+closest and most genuine friendship, and how the Individual was never
+truly apprehended by any other Individual, but was doomed to go its
+way in eternal solitude towards its goal. Mr. Janes, despite his
+romanticisms and enthusiasms, was in the main a sensible young man, and
+he would not have said these things had he known or guessed that
+their ground of inspiration would be recognised by his companion. But
+Gertrude's ideas had seemed to him--they would appear to have seemed
+so to many for a time--to hold a most true and beautiful though sad
+philosophy, and he was of that time of life when such thoughts are
+full of serious interest and charm. Had Mr. Janes appeared nine months
+earlier under the same conditions, Paul would probably have conceived
+a fiery hatred for him, but now he felt a kind of superiority to
+him, which was in part cynical, and in part affectionate, and in part
+self-disdainful. He had gone thrilling at all this for years on end,
+because it came from the lips of a pretty and engaging woman, with
+whom it was no more than a canting shibboleth. Of course it helped to
+disillusionize him, and he began even to see that Gertrude was not as
+beautiful as he had once believed her to be. This is almost a fatal
+symptom in the history of love's decay, unless the perception be
+attended, as it is in happy cases, by the perception of new beauties
+whose presence more than atones for the absence of the old. And Paul
+did not find new beauties. Gertrude was simply a pretty woman now, and a
+pretty woman is a very different creature from an angel whose effulgence
+so dazzles that it blinds the eyes. It was pleasant enough to philander
+with her, to touch the skirts of topics which had once been dangerous,
+but were dangerous no longer, but the glamour was gone, and young Mr.
+Janes had done as much to banish it in a single fortnight as Ralston
+and the bibulous explorer and the nine months of diligent labour all put
+together.
+
+It happened that the Baroness herself planned a little pleasure trip,
+which resulted in the closing of this chapter of Paul Armstrong's life.
+It placed him incidentally in a position of extreme awkwardness, and
+he was never able to decide whether he had acted well or ill in it. The
+point may be reckoned a fine one.
+
+Gertrude had made accidental acquaintance with a charming old house in
+the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau, a country chateau of the old-world
+sort, which was for sale, with all its furniture, its plate and its
+pictures, and a rather exceptionally good library. Failing a sale,
+it was provisionally for hire, and she, having, always, practically
+unlimited funds at her disposal, was inclined to take it and to spend
+some half-year in retirement, within easy reach of the capital and her
+friends, whilst she added the last touches to a volume of poems on which
+she had been engaged from time to time for some three or four years past
+She was in negotiation for the place, and just by way of experiment
+she had thought it a charming idea to give a little--a very
+little--house-party there. There were to be only five people--Gertrude's
+own Knickerbocker sheepdog, then one Comtesse de Cassault, Gertrude
+herself, and Mr. Janes and Paul. The servants of the departed family
+were available for a day; a chef and one or two kitchen assistants might
+be sent down from Paris. The party would assemble in time for luncheon,
+would spend the afternoon in a country excursion, would return to
+dinner, and so Pariswards by a special train. It was a pretty programme,
+and would cost M. le Baron de Wyeth a pretty penny, but the last
+consideration was Gertrude's affair alone. The Comtesse de Cassault was
+a beautiful person, a flirt of the demurest kind. The Knickerbocker was
+virtually nobody. In effect it was a _partie carree_ and bade fair to be
+enjoyable.
+
+It was the very loveliest of October days, and Paul began his adventures
+by a little accident to the voiture which should have borne him to the
+station. It was no very great matter, but he found himself entangled
+with the horses of an omnibus, and though he escaped personal injury,
+apart from an inconsiderable bruise or two, he had to make an awkward
+jump for safety, and, falling, split the knees of his trousers, and
+plastered his shirt-cuffs with the mud which an overnight shower had
+left behind. This petty disaster involved a return home, and the loss of
+his train. He despatched a wire and made inquiries. The quickest way of
+arriving at his destination appeared to be to book by train to a point
+some ten miles from it, and then to secure a conveyance of some sort
+to get the rest of the distance. He was turned out at a lonely rural
+station with no vehicle for hire within miles. Very good, he would make
+the best of a small misfortune, and would walk. He got directed by a
+stupid peasant, and set off in the wrong direction. When he had walked
+some two miles out of his way, he made further inquiries and retraced
+his steps. The roads were a little heavy, the sun was hot, and Paul of
+late had taken but little physical exercise. When, after three hours
+hard walking, he reached the retired chateau which was the scene of the
+day's festivity, luncheon had been over two hours before, and Gertrude
+and her party were away for a drive. But Mr. Armstrong was expected and
+was welcomed, and when he had a little repaired the ravages the journey
+had made upon his aspect, he was provided with a pleasant little repast
+and a bottle of excellent Moselle. The room in which he took this
+meal was on the ground-floor, and was an extension from the original
+building. It stood a few feet above a sloping lawn, and it had wide
+French windows on either side of it A balcony travelled round it on
+three sides, and on that which faced the sun heavy velvet curtains had
+been drawn. A full light which brought no dazzle with it came in from
+the windows opposite.
+
+When Paul had finished his meal, which he ate with great relish after
+the unaccustomed exercise of the day, he explored the balcony, and
+finding on the sunny side one of those long American cane-chairs which,
+when furnished with cushions, offer so agreeable a lounge, he sat down
+there and smoked a cigar. A while ago the small contretemps which had
+delayed him would have caused him profound trouble, or, at least, he
+would have made himself think so; but he took the matter quite easily
+now, and occupied himself in rehearsing the history he would have
+to tell on his hostess's return. The day was exquisitely mild, the
+temperature perfect, now that he was no longer in hasty effort; he had
+eaten heartily, had half emptied the bottle of excellent Moselle, and he
+was very tired. Before he had begun to realize fairly the fact that he
+was drowsy, he had fallen asleep.
+
+When he awoke there were voices in the room he had quitted some two
+hours before. The sun had gone down behind the trees in the blue
+distance, and he was just a trifle stiff and chilly. He was barely
+conscious of these things, when the voice of young Mr. Janes startled
+him broad awake.
+
+'It is dangerous,' said Mr. Janes; 'it is seriously dangerous.'
+
+'Silly boy!' said Gertrude, in a voice half mocking and half caressing.
+'How can an old woman like me be dangerous to the peace of a child like
+you?'
+
+'It is not dangerous to you, Gertrude,' said Mr. Janes, with a tremor
+which bespoke him very much in earnest 'I know your purity, and I
+reverence it. I know that I have done wrong in speaking as I have done,
+but I could not help it I must go.'
+
+'No, Ricardo,' said Gertrude, 'you must not go. You must only put this
+foolish fancy by--it is only a foolish fancy--and there will be no need
+to disturb a friendship which has been so sweet, so valuable, to both of
+us.'
+
+By this time it occurred suddenly to Paul that he had perhaps heard
+enough, but he had hitherto been held so entirely by surprise that he
+had not had time to think that this conversation was not intended for
+his ears. He arose, and began to creep stealthily away, when he saw that
+the curtains through which he had passed from the room were partly open
+as he had left them. And whilst he stood irresolute, wondering how
+he should escape, and trying to devise some means of declaring his
+presence, the talk went on.
+
+'Oh, damn it all!' he said to himself desperately. 'It isn't my fault.
+I know that line of country pretty well, and I have been so often
+introduced to it that I am hardly an intruder on it. I can't get away
+without being seen, and that will be awkward for everybody. And I can't
+stay here and listen to this rot.'
+
+But the talk went on, and what with the absurd misery of his own
+position and the well-known lines the conversation followed, he was
+fairly aflame with embarrassment and self-disdain. Exactly what this
+gifted and amiable young ass of a Bostonian was doing, and saying, and
+thinking, and feeling, he had been doing, saying, thinking, feeling a
+year ago. And Gertrude was playing with young Mr. Janes exactly as
+she had played with young Mr. Armstrong. Mr. Janes took a good deal of
+coaxing--more than Paul had done--but the trained coquette was equal to
+the task, and she brought him to the climax just as she had brought his
+predecessor. And there was the one little embrace granted, and there was
+a rustle of skirts, and the click of a door-latch, and Gertrude's voice
+said, 'You will stay _now_ Ricardo?' and Ricardo groaned. Then the door
+was closed, and there was silence. Then Ricardo groaned again, and
+Paul heard his disordered footsteps as he paced the room. The unwilling
+listener returned to the cane-chair and stretched himself upon it with
+great stealth, and feigned sleep in case of contingencies. But after
+five dreary minutes young Mr. Janes withdrew, and the way of escape was
+open.
+
+Paul made his way to the drawing-room, and found there the Knickerbocker
+lady and the demure Countess, with whom he had already a slight but
+agreeable acquaintance. He had had time to recover his self-possession,
+and though he wished himself a hundred miles away, he did his best to
+set the kite of conversation flying. He was making an attempt in his
+somewhat halting French to tell the story of his delay when Gertrude
+entered, and he told the tale to her, leaving her to translate it. His
+narrative was so vivacious that she trilled with laughter at it, and
+broke in upon it with a rapid paraphrase in French here and there, so
+that she and the Countess and the historian were all laughing heartily
+together when Mr. Janes came in with a sombre countenance, and made so
+funereal an effort to join in the mirth that Paul was fiercely tickled.
+And whilst he made a comedy of the morning's accident for her amusement,
+he was thinking all the while, 'You heartless, cruel, dangerous little
+jade!' and thinking it, too, with a real savagery of hatred. 'How
+many have you betrayed,' he asked in his heart 'To how many hungers of
+passion deliberately awakened have you offered that heart of stone?'
+
+The Baroness knew him mainly on the sentimental side, but that evening
+he launched out as a raconteur, and was gay and brilliant. Even Mr.
+Janes was awakened to sporadic laughter at the dinner-table, where they
+sat by preconcerted arrangement without the formality of evening-dress,
+and fared admirably from the _hors d'oeuvres_ to the coffee--a flawless
+meal. And dinner being over, they drove away under a noble moon to the
+railway-station, and bowled back to Paris.
+
+Paul, still with an air of gaiety, begged Gertrude to accord him ten
+minutes on the following day.
+
+'I have something to tell you,' he said, 'in which I am sure you will
+take the warmest interest. May I trespass on your time for just ten
+minutes in the morning? I got a curious little bit of intelligence
+to-day which will carry me, I fancy, to the United States.'
+
+'The United States? cried Gertrude. 'I can send you to the nicest people
+there. But shall you be long away?'
+
+'I shall be able to tell you that to-morrow,' Paul answered. 'May I?
+
+'Certainly,' she replied graciously. 'Shall we all breakfast together at
+twelve?'
+
+'I am sorry,' said Paul, 'but for me that is impossible. But if I may
+see you at a quarter to the hour----'
+
+'Certainly,' she said again.
+
+'Thank you,' he said, and turning away somewhat abruptly, as he thought
+afterwards, he began to talk to the irresponsive Janes, who sat, as it
+were, in fog.
+
+'You come with me?' said Paul to the young Bostonian when the terminus
+was reached, and the final adieux had been said amongst the rest.
+
+'Well, no,' said Mr. Janes. 'I am a little out of sorts for some reason
+or another, and I think that I'll go home.'
+
+'Well, then,' said Paul, 'I go with you. It's all the same; but I have
+something to say to you. It won't keep, Janes, and whether you and I
+like it or no, it has to be spoken.'
+
+'Oh,' said Janes, 'that sounds serious!'
+
+'Come to the Rue Castiglione with me,' Paul answered, 'and I will tell
+you exactly how serious it is.'
+
+'Very well,' the younger man answered, and Paul having chartered a
+fiacre, they drove home together.
+
+Arrived at his hotel, Paul ordered, and his guest refused, a
+whisky-and-soda, and the two sat down at a table in Paul's bedroom.
+
+'Mr. Janes,' he began, 'I hope very sincerely that what am about to say
+will not wound you--much. It is sure to hurt you a little at first, but
+it is meant in friendship. Let me begin by telling you that for some
+three years of my life, more or less, I made an unexampled ass of myself
+about a certain lady. And now let me confess that I was put into
+a beastly corner this afternoon, and could not help overhearing a
+conversation in which the lady held a part. That conversation was
+identical in result, and almost identical in terms, with one in which I
+took part about a year and a half ago.'
+
+Young Mr. Janes set his elbows on the table, and rested his face upon
+his hands. He was silent for a long time, but at last he said:
+
+'I cannot judge of the delicacy or otherwise of your statement, Mr.
+Armstrong, but I leave Paris to-morrow morning, and I shall not return.
+I should have gone, sir, without this revelation from you, and I am
+sorry that you have made it.'
+
+'I am not,' said Paul stanchly. 'Nor do I think that you will be in a
+little time. I wasted three years, Mr. Janes, in worship at that empty
+shrine, and when I had most accidentally and most unwittingly surprised
+another worshipper----'
+
+'Don't mock at it, for God's sake!' said young Mr. Janes. 'I'm going
+home. Good-night. I think you were right to tell me. I think I should
+have done the same. You're going----' He paused there, and looked up
+with a white face. 'You're going to see her in the morning?'
+
+'On that one errand,' Paul answered.
+
+'Well,' said Mr. Janes, 'good-bye, Armstrong.'
+
+He offered his hand, and Paul took it warmly. Janes went dejectedly
+away.
+
+At ten minutes before the strike of noon next day Paul and Gertrude
+met for the last time. She came gaily towards him with both hands
+outstretched in welcome, but her face changed as he stood before her
+with no recognition of her proffered salute.
+
+'What is the matter?' she asked.
+
+'I am here to tell you, Gertrude,' he responded. 'I told you a part of
+my adventures of yesterday, but I did not tell you all. When my walk was
+finished I had luncheon, and after luncheon I lay down on a chair upon
+the veranda and fell asleep there. I awoke at the moment when Mr. Janes
+was telling you that it was dangerous. I had not the courage to break
+in upon a conversation so intimate, and--may I say it?--so familiar. I
+could not get away without a risk of being seen, and so I stayed where I
+was.'
+
+She had gone white to the lips, and she was trembling, but she faced
+him.
+
+'Oh,' she said, 'I had thought you a little worthier than that! An
+eavesdropper!'
+
+'An eavesdropper!' Paul answered. 'That is understood; but not a willing
+one. You have wasted a good part of my life, but of that I have no right
+to complain. But I do lament a little that you should have taken away
+my last illusion. I had learned a little of your adorable sex, Gertrude,
+before I met you, and nothing in my experience had taught me to think
+well of it. But I believed I had found in you a proof of the monstrous
+falsity of the belief into which I was being thrust. Well, you see, you
+confirm that belief. I shall go to my grave now in the certainty that
+one-half the world is made to wheedle and befool the other half, and
+that every woman is born to treason as the sparks fly upward. You lied
+to me, Gertrude, and I believed you. You lured me on deliberately, with
+a cold cruelty for which there is no name. I shall never hate you as
+well as I have loved you, for I have a rather poor capacity in that way.
+You found a man with a bruised heart, and for your own wicked pleasure
+you set to work to torture him. There is no use in words, and I have
+said all I came to say.'
+
+That was the end of that episode, and a minute later he was striding
+along the street. In three days he was aboard ship at Havre, and the
+disconsolate Janes was one of his fellow-voyagers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+If a philosopher were set to describe the best and the worst of life, he
+would certainly have a considerable choice before him. But amongst the
+best he would have to set down love, and amongst the worst he would have
+to set down love's disillusion. The curse of age is indifference. With
+the increase of the years you come to a time when nothing matters.
+Anything which helps hearty youth this way is harmful. In ninety cases
+in a hundred age is a crime against the hopes of the world, and nothing
+ages like cynicism. This is the beginning of senile decay. And what is
+a man to do who has lavished his heart, and has always found that the
+woman has played counters of affectation against the sincere gold of
+his soul? Obviously he turns cynic, despising himself and his too cheap
+emotions; and to cheapen one's own emotions is to play the very devil.
+It was written from of old that a house divided against itself cannot
+stand, and a man who has learned to loathe one half of his own nature is
+not stable. Even that he has a perfect right to do it does not help him.
+
+May Gold had fooled Paul Armstrong. Claudia Belmont had carried on the
+game. So had Annette, and so had Gertrude. It was a wise man who wrote
+that the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird, but he wrote
+nonsense, all the same. The capturing net is the one to which we are
+most accustomed.
+
+So with a heart filled with distrust, and misliking half the world, Paul
+travelled across the Atlantic, and sauntered about the United States.
+The money question was settled for the time being, if not definitely,
+and for a year or two he would have no occasion to think of ways and
+means. He got away into the prairies and the mountains, camped out,
+shooting and hunting, learned to sit a horse, learned to handle a gun,
+to build a tent, and to cook.
+
+Then he went back into civilization, and travelled on to San Francisco,
+and the western parts of Canada. And one day at Victoria, having
+nothing better before him, he wandered on board a vessel which in
+four-and-twenty hours from that time was bound to sail for Japan. He
+took lunch with the proprietors and officers of this boat, and, almost
+before he knew it, had booked his passage for Yokohama. Why not see the
+world?
+
+There were ladies aboard, and they flirted with the stranger because he
+was young and already famous, and more than average good-looking. They
+flirted demurely, and they flirted fiercely, and they flirted in all the
+ways which are known to women; but for once in feminine experience they
+met a man who was proof against all their charms, charmed they never
+so wisely. To be dangerous to man's peace of mind a woman must inspire
+belief, and in Paul's heart belief was dead.
+
+The ship went on to New Zealand, her port of call Dunedin. Why not
+New Zealand? Why not see the world? More flirts aboard, and more
+flirtations, but still the hitherto so susceptible heart unmoved. The
+next port of call Hobart Town, then Melbourne. Still, why not see the
+world? More flirts and more flirtations, as if there were nothing but
+the rustle of a petticoat which is worth taking notice of on the surface
+of the planet. But observe that the young man is spoiled, at least for
+the time being.
+
+Possum and kangaroo shooting make good sport. Rabbits swarm in literal
+millions. We grow very handy with the gun, very handy at building a
+shelter of any sort, or at cooking a dinner.
+
+Then back to New Zealand, and here the beginning of a new life.
+
+New Year's Eve, as it happens, and the exile's mind not unnaturally
+filled with thoughts of home. And tucked away in the further corner of
+the dining-room of the Grand Hotel the familiar figure of an English
+comedian! who, when Paul last saw him, was playing in a piece written
+far himself and Darco.
+
+'Hillo, Paul! Can't I get into any blooming corner of the world but
+some old pal is bound to root me out?' 'How's trade?' said Paul. 'Going
+strong?' 'Bad, dear boy,' the comedian answered. 'Bad as bad can be.
+Do me a turn, old fellow. Write me a play. I've brought out three, and
+they're all rotten failures. Ask the press, and they'll tell you
+I'm coining money. Ask me, and I'll tell you I'm dropping it by the
+barrelful. Been here long--eh?'
+
+Paul was at the theatre again that night, for the first time since he
+had left England, two years ago. Two years ago! Such a distance had been
+placed between him and Gertrude--between him and Annette!
+
+A dreary farce in three acts greeted him, and ambitions awoke anew. The
+cheery comedian asked:
+
+'Why not try it on the dog? Give us a bit of human nature, dear child.
+Run it round these far outlying provinces. No harm to you if you make
+a failure; loads of minted money if you make a hit. What I always say,
+dear boy: minimize the risk of failure--eh?'
+
+Paul took fire. He knew his man, and could fit him like a glove.
+
+'Where are you in ten weeks' time?' he asked 'Ten weeks? said the
+comedian. 'Auckland.' 'Good!' said Paul. 'We meet in Auckland.' 'Right
+you are,' said the comedian; and then they parted, and never met again
+for years.
+
+But the talk set Paul at work again, and he laboured like a Trojan on
+the shores of Lake Te Anau, with heath and sky and mountains for his
+comrades and inspirers, and when his play was finished he went back
+to civilization to discover that his comedian was well on his way to
+England. That mattered little enough. He sent a copy of the piece to
+Darco, and wandered hither and thither about the southern island until
+by hazard he tumbled against a new fate in the person of a new comedian.
+
+'And you don't happen to have a play in your pocket, Mr. Armstrong? said
+he, in the first hour of their acquaintanceship.
+
+'As it happens,'said Paul, 'I have. You may read it this afternoon.'
+
+There was a business chaffer, and the affair was virtually settled. Paul
+was to read the play to the company of the travelling comedian on the
+morrow.
+
+He presented himself at the theatre at the appointed hour, and the
+manager kept him waiting for a minute or two whilst he harangued the
+baggage-man.
+
+'You'll know her by this portrait: she's small; she's very
+ordinary-looking; she wears her hair in a topknot, with a hat stuck over
+it about so high'--he held his arms abroad. 'Excuse me, Mr. Armstrong,
+we are all ready for you with the exception of a lady who will be here
+in half an hour. I wired for her a week ago to Australia The boat
+was signalled two hours since. Since we must wait, you won't mind my
+utilizing the half-hour?'
+
+'Pray go on,' said Paul; and, seating himself upon a rolled-up bale of
+carpet, surrendered his mind to ennui.
+
+In due time the lady for whose help the company waited appeared. The
+play was read, the characters were apportioned, and the date of the
+first production was fixed Paul took no special note of the new arrival,
+and, indeed, she did not seem specially notable. She was little more
+than a child, with a child's stature but a woman's figure. She had
+brown eyes and brown hair, and she wore a dress of brown velvet. She was
+strange to the crowd about her, so it seemed; for she was introduced
+to every member of it, and she scrutinized everybody with a childlike
+mixture of frankness and reticence.
+
+'Like a little brown mouse,' said Paul to himself, 'peeping out of
+her cranny at an assemblage of cats, without quite knowing the cat's
+proclivity.'
+
+Beyond this she was Miss Madge Hampton, an amateur of some small private
+means, and he thought no more about her. Rehearsal in an insignificant
+part displayed her as capable and willing to be taught.
+
+The company never stayed more than a week in any one town, and for a
+considerable part of the time went bushwhacking from place to place,
+taking one-night stands! and crawling by sleepy railways amongst some
+of the most exquisite scenery of the land. Paul had nothing better
+to do--had, indeed, nothing else to do--and found a pleasure in this
+revival of old experiences. It reminded him of the ancient days with
+Darco, which now looked so far away, and he surrendered himself, as he
+had always done, to the interests of the moment and the hour. A fair
+proportion of the working day was spent in travel, and sometimes, as
+they crossed the exquisite plain of flowering green, with the snowcapped
+mountains in the distance, the ladies of the company would cry out at
+sight of some especial bank of wild flowers, and the conductor would
+stop the leisurely train to let them go out and cull bouquets. At some
+such excursions Paul assisted, and, whether by hazard or goodwill, he
+found himself oftener by the side of Miss Madge Hampton than elsewhere.
+He had himself been born to the inheritance of a most inordinate
+mouthful of provincial accent, and since he had studied and learned to
+speak almost every dialect known to the little islands which are the
+centre of our Empire, his ear had grown nice and critical. The ladies
+and gentlemen of the company, with the exception of the famous and
+admirable comedian who led them, were all of colonial education, and
+they all spoke with the accent the existence of which our colonial
+brethren and sisters so strenuously deny. It was, of course, the
+language of fashion, as they knew it, but it was, as it still is,
+perilously near the English of Mile End, and the ear of the Englishman,
+grown critical through many studies, used to ache at it. The leader of
+the troupe talked the English of the stage, which, after all, is perhaps
+not quite the English of the cultured Englishman, but was not altogether
+intolerable. But, by some accident, Miss Hampton had no trace of the
+accent which disfigured the speech of her companions, and this little
+fact of itself accounted for something in the very gradual intimacy
+which grew up between herself and Paul.
+
+The train was sauntering along in its customary easy-going fashion, when
+it came to a halt at the signal of a man in corduroy trousers, a flannel
+shirt which had once been scarlet, and a felt hat of no colour. The
+signaller sat upon a fence and wanted a chat with the driver, who was
+quite willing, in the course of his leisurely progress, to spare him
+half an hour or so.
+
+'If you ladies,' said the conductor, 'would like to stretch yourselves,
+there's any amount of flowers to be got here, and there's time to waste.
+There's no run back except on a Saturday, and an hour or two in the time
+of arrival won't make no difference.'
+
+So the ladies got down and went flower-hunting, whilst the driver and
+the stoker and the guard sat on the fence together and talked politics
+and the latest mail from England.
+
+Paul went out with the rest, and the party chanced upon a marshy piece
+of land where a species of purple iris grew in great profusion. There
+was a cry of delight at the sunlit patch of colour, and everybody
+charged down upon it, with the result that half of the travellers were
+bogged to the knees, and there was a good deal of pully-hauley business
+gone through before the last adventuress was extricated. Miss Madge
+Hampton fell to Paul's share by accident of mere neighbourhood, and she
+stretched out her little brown-kid-gloved hand to him with an air of
+timid appeal. He pulled stanchly, but the ground gave way beneath him,
+and before he knew it she was in his arms. There was a laugh all round,
+and a blush on both sides, but the lady was on firm earth again, and
+in a minute or two the drawling call of the conductor brought the party
+back to the train. The journey was renewed, and the incident forgotten
+by everybody save the dramatist, who sat coiled in his corner, with his
+eyes fixed upon a book which he might as well have held upside-down.
+The women of the company, five in number, were chattering like a nest
+of starlings, shrilling high against the slow rumble of the wheels. Miss
+Hampton alone was silent amongst them. Their talk was of matrimony, and
+the leading lady sparkled out with an engaging inquiry which embraced
+the whole carriageful.
+
+'And what about Miss Hampton?'
+
+'Oh,' said the little brown lady demurely, 'I shall die an old maid!'
+
+It was at this instant that a singular and yet accustomed pang assailed
+the dramatist's heart. He ought to have known it well enough, in all
+conscience, for he had already had an opportunity of studying it four
+times over. May Gold had taught it, and Claudia had taught it, and
+Annette for a fleeting instant, and Gertrude through a heavy year or
+two. He looked at the smiling little face before him, and it took a new
+sweetness in his eyes. If he had had his absolute will at that moment,
+he would have taken its owner in his arms, and have cried 'No!' to
+her protestation. But, then, it is difficult to do these things in
+the presence of a whole carriageful of people who make a profession
+of comedy, and he restrained himself, wondering a little why such an
+impulse should have assailed him. Yet from that time forward he began to
+watch and to listen for the monitions of his own heart, which of itself
+is a dangerous thing for any susceptible young man to do, and he began
+to find charms in Miss Hampton which were quite separate from the
+exceptional delicacy of her English speech. He knew very well that he
+had no right to fall in love with any woman; he was bound to Annette; he
+was tied to her so long as she should live. But being newly awakened to
+a sense of the weakness which had pursued him through his life so far,
+he became afraid, and watched his own emotions with a jealous care.
+
+The man who is born to fall in love will do it, whatever happens; but
+there are, of course, ways and ways of doing it, and this particular way
+of keeping guard over the emotions is perhaps as swift as any.
+
+He held the figure at arm's length, as it were, and critically surveyed
+it. Why, he asked himself repeatedly, should this simple little
+personality appeal to him so strongly? To say the most and the least of
+it, it was feminine, and he had made up his mind about the sex when he
+had quitted Gertrude. He had honestly despaired of finding a woman who
+was not either a coquette or a fool, and he had taught himself to use
+the whole sex after the manner of his conception; and now the cynic
+feeling into which he had conspired with circumstance to school himself
+was breaking up again, and, with all his knowledge of the world, he felt
+himself helpless.
+
+There never was a tale of this sort which came to a definite end without
+the aid of circumstances which were not planned by either party to the
+coming contract. It befell that the only married woman of the corps, who
+travelled with a child of seven, took cold, and had to be left behind.
+The child, playing, neglected, about the hotel, sustained some injury
+in the lift which plied between the upper and the lower stories. The
+company was only twenty miles away, and Paul, learning the news, bought
+grapes and jellies for the younger invalid and wines for the elder, and
+chartered a carriage to the town where they were staying. Half a mile
+before him was a hooded vehicle, which kept its relative place, more or
+less, throughout the journey. It was full in sight until the outlying
+streets of the town were reached, and it came into view again when he
+arrived at his destination--drawn up before the hotel door, and empty.
+A moment's interview with the manageress gave him the right to mount
+the stairs, and, when he tapped at the door of the room in which the
+invalids reposed, a voice he had not expected to hear bade him come in.
+There was Miss Hampton, of whom he had been thinking a good deal too
+much of late, sitting with the child upon her knees, and holding a grape
+above his lips. The child pouted for it, and he and the mother and the
+visitor were all laughing together.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said the intruder clumsily; 'I had expected to find
+you alone. I have driven over with these little odds and ends in the way
+of medical comforts for the boy.'
+
+He stood confused, and laid his burden on the table which stood in the
+centre of the room.
+
+'Didn't you guess,' laughed the little mother from the couch on which
+she lay, 'that Miss Hampton would be here before you?'
+
+'No,' said Paul. 'If I had guessed, I should not have intruded. You'll
+take these things for the little fellow, won't you?'
+
+'You're not going yet, Mr. Armstrong?' said the lady on the couch. 'You
+and Miss Hampton will have a nice little ride back together.'
+
+'I should not dream,' said Paul, 'of intruding on Miss Hampton, and I
+must go back at once.'
+
+He had no business in front of him, but he dreaded himself, and he was
+afraid of a _tete-a-tete_ with the plain little woman with the brown
+eyes.
+
+'But,' said mamma, lifting her head from the arm of the sofa, and
+casting upon him the look of _ingenue_ archness which was almost her
+sole fortune on the boards, 'Miss Hampton's horse has cast a shoe, and
+the shoeing-smith is miles away. Did you ride or drive, Mr. Armstrong?
+I'm sure you couldn't have ridden with all those nice things you've
+been so kind to bring me. You must have driven, and you must drive Miss
+Hampton home again. Isn't it kind of her to have come over to see me
+from such a distance 'Just look and see: I'm actually smothered in wine
+and grapes and jelly and flowers. And wasn't it kind of you, too, Mr.
+Armstrong, to think of me just at the same moment! And wasn't it kind of
+Miss Hampton's horse to cast a shoe so that you would be obliged to go
+back together, whether you meant it or no?'
+
+Miss Hampton was bending over the boy, and her face was hidden; but one
+blushing cheek gave warranty for the rest, and it was evident to Paul
+that she was as embarrassed as himself. She spoke icily: 'Mr. Armstrong
+was not aware that I was coming here. I must go at once. I have no doubt
+the landlord will be able to find me another driver.'
+
+'Now, why on earth,'asked the little actress from her sofa, 'should two
+people who know each other as well as you do take two carriages to drive
+along the self-same road? Now, when you come to think of it, isn't that
+absurd! And such a chance for a spoon, too, all along that quiet road!'
+
+'Good-afternoon, dear,' said Miss Hampton, setting down the child, and
+offering an Arctic kiss to the reclining lady; 'I must go.'
+
+With that she swept from the room with an air of dignity and confusion,
+and Paul shook hands with the invalid and followed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+There are just as many different ways of falling in love as there are
+characters and temperaments, and even the same man--unless he be a
+fellow of no originality--will not fall in love twice in the same
+fashion. As to the wisdom or righteousness or the mere everyday question
+of plain honour involved in the permission which Paul Armstrong gave
+himself to fall in love at all, under the conditions in which he stood,
+there seemed room for no illusion. He should by this time have been
+something of a man of the world, and might reasonably be supposed to be
+acting with his eyes open to consequences. He had his compunctions by
+the hundred, his hoverings by the way, and turnings back from it. But
+many delicate signs which would have been invisible to him had he been
+less interested persuaded him that love lay ready for him, and after all
+the follies of his slaveries here and there, he persuaded himself that
+if he could but accept it, it was of a kind to atone for all that had
+gone before. And why, he asked himself, if this were true, should he
+stand for ever in loneliness? It was in him to be constant if only truth
+were met with truth. He could have been faithful to Claudia. He could
+have been faithful to Annette. He could have been faithful to Gertrude.
+And though no man whose sense of the humour of life does not leave him
+wholly blind to the comedy of his own existence could fail to see the
+bitter jest that lay here against himself, he urged the point seriously.
+He _had_ been true in each case until faith had grown into blind folly,
+and bare respect for an old idol had become impossible. The one crime of
+his life had been acted against himself. He had believed Annette, and in
+the mere feebleness of acquiescence he had hung a weight about his neck
+which he was doomed to carry as long as her life should last.
+
+And now, had he the right to redress the wrong he had inflicted upon
+himself? Feeble always, always a drifter, a good deal of a coward in his
+way of shrinking from avoidable pain, but never deliberately cruel or
+selfish. And now, was he to do a deliberately cruel and selfish thing?
+Or was as much mischief as might well be done wrought already?
+
+For months had gone by, and the drifting policy had brought him plainly
+to the question, Was this quiet, sweet little girl in love with him?
+No blame to her if it were so. He had signalled her from the first for
+attention and companionship, and she knew nothing of his history. She
+had no guess as to the fatal bond which held him. Every day he knew her
+better. Her mind and heart opened out before him like twin flowers, full
+of purity and sweet odour.
+
+She was courage incarnate, and her hatred of cruelty was a passion. A
+hulking blackguard of a teamster was cruelly flogging an overladen horse
+one day, and Madge, at the risk of her life, was in amongst the traffic
+of the street in a flash, and stood between the beast and his dumb
+victim voiceless and pale with rage, her little figure at its height
+and her eyes blazing. Paul's chance presence and the neighbourhood of
+a policeman were probably answerable for the peaceful solution of this
+episode, for the girl had snatched the whip from the bully's hand, and
+he was in an attitude which threatened violence when Paul intervened.
+
+'My dear child!' said Paul in a tone of remonstrance as he conducted her
+from the scene.
+
+'Oh,' she broke in, with her little teeth clenched, 'I couldn't bear
+it!'
+
+He saw the folly of reproof and held his tongue, and when they came in
+sight of the theatre she ran indoors and escaped him.
+
+He had fallen into a habit of walking home with her when the night's
+work was over, and saying good-bye to her at the door of her lodgings.
+This fact made her mightily unpopular with the ladies of the company,
+who saw no reason why she should be thus distinguished, and the snubs
+she took disposed him to be more attentive to her.
+
+They drifted closer, but no confidences were exchanged between them.
+
+The company made for Australia, and there were six days of travel
+aboard a well-found steamer, and this gave more than ample time for the
+position to solidify. There were long promenades on deck by moonlight
+and starlight, and the two found a perch in the bows out of the way
+of all observation and regard, and there exchanged all manner of
+confidences. The girl's simple life unrolled itself--its hopes, its
+ambitions! its home affections. She talked of her reading, of her music,
+of all the little intimacies of home-life. Before the brief voyage was
+over he seemed, to his own apprehension, to know his companion more
+completely than he had ever known man or woman, and he was hourly more
+and more in love with her. He was feather-headed and irresponsible
+enough to be happy in the circumstances for hours at a time, but when he
+was alone, and his heart was no longer flattered by the worship she so
+innocently offered, the skeleton he carried about with him came out of
+its cupboard and seemed to mop and mow before him in derision. He was
+bound hand and foot to his fate, and the bonds were not to be severed
+There was Annette in far-away London and Paris dragging out a miserable
+and ignominious life, which was likely to last as long as his own, and
+he could see no hope of freedom. With every passing day he felt
+more clearly that he was bent upon an inexcusable wrong, and yet, so
+strangely fashioned is the conscience of a man who is without the power
+of will, all his self-reproaches did but add to the tenderness and
+fervour of his desire.
+
+The steamer reached its destination late upon a Saturday, and Sunday was
+a holiday. Paul and Madge spent the day together, wandering on a long
+stretch of sandy coast which lay between the port and the bright
+green waters of the sea; and all the time there was a growing sense
+of inevitability in his mind. He knew that he was going to ask for
+happiness, and that he was prepared to pay his self-respect and manhood
+for it. The talk was of trifles in the morning until they strolled
+home to luncheon; it was of trifles again in the afternoon until they
+strolled home to dinner, and it was of trifles still when they set out
+in the yellow sunset to saunter once more in a scene which had already
+grown strangely memorable and familiar. There were no sunset clouds, but
+the pageant of the dying day had a sort of sullen and pathetic beauty.
+The blazing sun dropped behind the far-off sea-line, and a great band of
+saffron rimmed the whole horizon, fading into palest green as it spread
+upward, and this in turn melted into a blue which at the zenith looked
+unfathomable. A full moon, which had until now been invisible, looked
+down from the very centre of the sky. There was none of the lingering
+twilight of more temperate climates. The change from broad daylight, in
+which every outline and detail of the landscape was accented strongly,
+to the dim, mystic and diffused radiance of the moon and stars was like
+an episode in a transformation-scene at the theatre. A mere ten minutes
+had sufficed to change the whole character and sentiment of the scene.
+It was like walking out of one world into another, and a rude chorus of
+voices, accompanied by the sounds of a banjo and a concertina, came from
+some body of merrymakers beyond a distant island in the bay. It moved
+away farther and farther into the distance until the harshness was
+softened to an almost spiritual melody, and after awhile it reached the
+ear only at uncertain intervals.
+
+They came to a place at which they had rested in the afternoon. Some
+high tide of long ago had deposited here a great wreath of wrack, a
+hundred yards inland, and piled up in places to a height of some twelve
+feet. There were scores of cushiony resting-places here like great
+luxurious arm-chairs, and the wrack when disturbed by a touch gave out
+dry and stinging odours of sea-salt and iodine.
+
+Paul, with a mere motion of the hand to his companion, threw himself
+into one of the hollows, and she took a seat at a little distance from
+him. He lay, the brim of his hat sheltering his eyes from the moonlight,
+and stared at the spangled vault above him, where the stars seemed to
+hang from threads of gold and silver as if they were upheld by an actual
+tangible roof. He knew that his hour had come, but he obeyed the impulse
+which controlled him with an infinite self-accusation.
+
+'Madge,' he said, rolling over where he lay and stretching out his hand
+towards her. It fell upon her own, and she made no motion to evade
+him. It was the first caress he had ever offered her, and her tacit
+acceptance of it hurried him into passion. 'Madge,' he said again; 'dear
+little Madge!'
+
+She glanced at him for an instant only, and in the moonlight her eyes
+glinted with sudden tears.
+
+'I have no right,' he said, 'to speak to you like this. I have had no
+right to claim your companionship as I have done since we first began to
+know each other.'
+
+She was quite silent; but under his light caress he felt her hand
+tremble, and she glanced at him once more and looked away again.
+
+'I have not had a happy life,' he went on, 'but that ought to dispose me
+to do what I can to keep unhappiness out of the lives of other people.
+If I tell you that I am very conscious of having deceived you, of having
+left you in the dark about myself in respect to things you have a right
+to know, what shall you say to me? What will you think of me?'
+
+Again she turned to look at him, and this time her glance rested on him,
+but still she made no answer.
+
+Paul withdrew his hand, sat upright, and began mechanically to charge
+his pipe and to smoke.
+
+'I met an utterly worthless woman many years ago,' he began, after a
+long pause, 'and I threw my life away upon her. We were married, and
+she is still alive. She is likely to live for many years to come; and,
+indeed, there is no probability of escape from her. It is not likely
+that she and I will ever see each other any more; but I am legally bound
+to her so long as she shall live. I ought to have told you this months
+ago.'
+
+He rose and began to pace up and down the sands before her. He looked up
+at her from time to time, and her eyes followed him as he moved. Not
+a sound escaped her lips, but her fast-flowing tears glittered on her
+cheeks like rain.
+
+'I should have told you,' he cried, writhing between self-accusation and
+self-excuse, 'but I had not the courage to put an end to a time which
+has been so lull of sweetness, so full of a mad kind of hope which I
+should never have admitted to my heart I know,' he went on, pausing
+desperately before her, 'what must be in your mind. I know that you are
+asking how I dared to draw you on to such a friendship as ours has been
+through an acted lie, and how I have dared at last to tell the truth I
+have postponed so long. You have a right to be wounded; you have a
+right to be angry. You will do yourself the merest justice if you teach
+yourself to despise and hate me; and if you tell me to go away at once
+and darken your life no further, I will do it But let me say just this
+one thing: whatever my cowardly silence may seem to prove, I have never
+had a thought of you that has not been full of the profoundest respect
+and reverence. You know now the truth about me, and you know that in
+spite of it I have made love to you for months past. I can't tell what
+a high-minded and pure-hearted woman may feel in such a case. I can't
+guess if such a woman could find it in her nature to accept the lifelong
+worship and affection of a man who is circumstanced as I am, if she
+could find the courage and self-sacrifice to join her destinies with a
+broken life like mine. Oh, if it were possible!' he cried, 'and oh, if
+it were possible that I could nourish such a hope in fancy, and not know
+in my inmost heart that only a scoundrel could be guilty of it! There,
+Madge, it is all said now. It had to be said, but I shall never forgive
+myself for having said it.'
+
+The accusations he brought against himself were just as real as the
+passion and despair which urged him on.
+
+The Solitary, in his smoke-clouded mountain eyrie, surveyed all this, as
+he had surveyed the varied experiences of life which had passed before
+it in clear vision through his mind, and still the passion and despair
+and the self-accusing, self-excusing thoughts were as real to him as
+they had been at the moment he recalled. He accepted that reality as a
+proof, scarcely needed, of the already established shallowness of his
+own nature--a brawling stream always ready to rave round any little
+impediment in its path; a mere miniature of the torrent, with no
+resolute strength or purpose in it, but full of a fussy vivacity and
+self-importance which he could most heartily and bitterly despise.
+All his life long the same futile story repeated: the same headlong
+impetuosity, the same want of steadfast force, the same absence of
+control. And yet, even in the depth of self-reproach, he could not deny
+to himself some hint of purpose which had an honest meaning in his mind,
+and, looking back, he saw that he had found an entrance to a purer and
+better life than he had known before. Had he been worthy of the trust he
+asked for, he would have blamed himself less for asking. Tears were hot
+and harsh in his throat as the scene unrolled itself before him.
+
+Paul Armstrong--the Paul Armstrong of those irrevocable bygone
+years--was striking up and down the sand, and the girl was still weeping
+without a sound, when the Exile's thought flew back to them. It was as
+if a curtain had descended for an instant only, and had risen again to
+reveal the same actors in the same scene.
+
+'I had better leave you now, Madge,' said Paul, half maddened by the
+sight of the uncomplaining grief he had awakened. 'I will watch you home
+as soon as you care to go, but I won't intrude upon you any longer.'
+
+The slight figure rose from its seat upon the wrack, and stood before
+him with downcast and averted head, but he could still see the
+tears falling like diamond-drops in the clear moonlight. He turned
+irresolutely away, but he had made only a single step before he was
+vividly back again with an impulsive and imploring hand upon her
+shoulder.
+
+'Tell me,' he said, 'that you forgive me. Tell me that you will be able
+to think of me when I am gone with something--some feeling that will not
+be all contempt. You won't always despise me, will you, Madge?'
+
+'I shall never despise you,' she answered, in a voice she could barely
+control; 'I shall always remember this time.'
+
+'And you don't hate me for having spoken?'
+
+She looked up at him with a strange smile, which was so tender and so
+full of pity that he caught his breath at the sight of it.
+
+'No,' she said, 'I shall never hate you. I must be as truthful as you
+have been. I must tell you that I had heard something of what you have
+told me before we left New Zealand. I didn't know if it were true, and I
+did not even wish to ask.'
+
+He stood still with that unconscious hand upon her shoulder, and his
+heart gave a leap as he asked:
+
+'You knew I loved you, Madge--you knew I loved you?'
+
+'I was quite sure of that,'she answered 'I have believed it for a long
+time.'
+
+'Madge,' he said, 'are you strong enough--are you brave enough--can you
+put such faith in me? Can you believe that I will lay a life's unfailing
+devotion at your feet--that the very fact that there can be no legal tie
+between us will make me always all the truer to you? I swear to you that
+if you trust yourself to me, my whole life shall be one act of gratitude
+for your faith and courage, and that no act or word of mine shall ever
+cause you to regret the compact.'
+
+Her tears had ceased to fall, and when she next looked at him her face
+was grave, and looked in the moonlight as pale as snow.
+
+'If I were alone,' she answered, 'you should have my answer now, but I
+have others to consider.'
+
+'Oh, who,' he cried, 'can come between us?'
+
+'Let us go home,' she answered simply and bravely. 'I must have time
+to think. Please say no more to me to-night.' She moved away, and Paul,
+taking his place beside her, walked in silence 'There is no one,' she
+said, when they had traversed a hundred yards or more, 'who has a right
+to dictate what my life shall be; but I have never done anything without
+my mother's knowledge and consent, and I never shall.'
+
+Paul had passed from despair almost to certainty, but this chilled him
+suddenly.
+
+'Ah,' he said, with a gasping breath, 'is there any mother in the world
+who would consent to such a scheme?'
+
+'You must write to me,' she answered, 'such a letter as I can send to
+her. I will write, too, and I will ask her not to answer until she has
+seen us both.'
+
+'That rings a death-knell,' said Paul 'I have no hope of consent in such
+a case.'
+
+'I can't tell,' she answered simply, 'but there is no other way.'
+
+'And yet you love me, Madge?' said Paul. She made no answer, and he drew
+nearer to her, and put an arm about her shoulder. 'You love me, little
+Madge?' he urged her.
+
+She gave a sigh of acquiescence, a half-breathed 'Yes.'
+
+'And you could deny your own heart and mine? You could let me go away
+alone, and live alone yourself, with an empty heartache?'
+
+Her answer came, like an echo of a former tone, just the same
+half-breathed token of assent. There was a quiet resolution in it, for
+all it was so softly spoken, which bound him to silence for a time.
+
+There was more strength of resolution, more power and purpose,
+expressed thus simply than he had ever been conscious of himself, and he
+recognised that fact quite clearly.
+
+They walked from this time forth in silence, until at the outskirts of
+the town they reached the small and retired hotel at which the girl had
+taken lodgings, and there they parted formally enough.
+
+'You will write?' she asked, holding out her hand to him in token of
+dismissal.
+
+'I will write,' he answered, taking her hand, and bowing over it.
+
+There were some Sabbath loiterers in the street, and it was necessary
+that the two should part undemonstratively.
+
+Paul, as he walked to his own more pretentious hostel, recognised the
+fact that for good or evil he had shot his bolt There was nothing at
+that hour of which he was more certain than that his present destiny and
+the destiny of Madge lay in the hands of a woman he had never seen,
+and he did not even attempt to disguise from himself the overwhelming
+probability against an affirmative answer to his hopes. He was very
+miserably certain that he had no right to hope, and that accusing
+conscience of his which never permitted him to stray without rebuke, and
+yet had never been worth a farthing to him in his whole career, worried
+him without ceasing. But he knew enough of himself already to have
+learned that the fault of character which had wrecked him was half
+made up of reluctance to add pain to pain. It is not always the wholly
+selfish wrongdoer who is answerable for the greater sorrows of life. It
+is assuredly not he who suffers in his own person; but, worse than that,
+the tender-hearted, conscience-worried man of feeble will is always
+afraid of causing a slight grief by retracing a mistaken step, and so
+goes on inevitably to the creation of troubles which appal him when he
+comes to contemplate them in after-hours. And to have a full theoretical
+knowledge of this fact enforced by years of experience is to be
+gifted with no safeguard. 'To be weak'--there is no wiser saying among
+the utterances of the wise--'to be weak is to be miserable.' To be a
+fool and to know it is the extreme of misery, and this extreme does not
+fall to the lot of those who are extremest in folly.
+
+What Paul wrote that night is barely worth chronicling, and may be
+fairly constructed by anyone who has so far pursued his story. But the
+Exile, sitting over the embers of the fire at which he had cooked his
+coarse mid-day meal, threw himself backward on the trodden grass,
+and, groping behind the flap of the tent, dragged his brown canvas bag
+towards him, and having made a search among its contents, found a heap
+of stained, crumpled and disordered papers, one of which he smoothed
+out upon his knee and read. It had been given to him in that first
+unspeakably tranquil and happy year which Madge and he had spent
+together in Europe. It was the first blotted draft of the letter to her
+mother with which she had accompanied his own, and it ran thus:
+
+'My darling Mother,
+
+'I am putting this into a separate envelope, and on the envelope I am
+writing to ask you to read Mr. Armstrong's letter to me before you read
+my own. He has explained everything there, and now I must make my appeal
+to you. I have promised that I will do nothing without your consent,
+and I am not very hopeful that I shall secure it. You know that I am not
+light-minded, or in the habit of saying what I do not mean, and I shall
+only tell you this: I love him with my whole heart and mind, and if you
+decide that we are to part I shall accept your decision, but I shall
+never know a happy day again. Paul is not only a great man but a good
+one.'
+
+(The reader had faced this blow so often that he was ready for it,
+but he had no guard against it, and it struck home so heavily that he
+groaned aloud.)
+
+'I know now, partly from what I have lately learned from other people,
+partly from what he told me last night, but mainly from the letter you
+have read, the story of his life, and I know how profoundly unhappy it
+has been. I want to comfort and sustain him, and I am not afraid to face
+all the difficulties which lie before me. I can hear a clear call to
+duty, and I am sure that his love and mine will strengthen me to do it.
+You have never known me to be frivolous or foolish in my thoughts about
+such things as these, and until we can all three meet together, you must
+have patience with me. It would be wrong and cruel on my side to
+throw everything upon you, and I shall not ask you to make yourself
+responsible for what you may think my wrong-doing. There are a hundred
+thousand things in my heart which I cannot say, and amongst them all
+there is the dreadful fear that I may have lost your respect. But you
+ought to know the truth, and the whole truth. I have not lost my own,
+and I cannot believe that I shall ever have the right to be ashamed.'
+
+There was much more than this. There were half-articulate expressions of
+affection and fear of an agony of regret for a possible severance. And
+through it all there beamed like a star, steadfast and unobscured in
+tempest, the loyal heart, the uncountable soul which, in whatsoever
+error, knows love and fealty as its only guides.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Paul knew that Madge and he were to have a travelling companion on the
+voyage, and that the companion was to be Madge's sister, but he did not
+meet her until he stepped aboard the steamer bound for Tilbury Docks
+from Adelaide. Her name was Phyllis, but for some reason or no reason
+her own small world had elected to call her Bill, and to that name only
+she gave willing answer, unless she were flattered from the memory of
+short frocks by being addressed as Miss Hampton. She was a child of
+astonishing beauty, with eyes like stars and the face of a young angel,
+and people who did not know her received an impression of sanctity and
+innocence when they beheld her. A complete knowledge of her character
+revealed her as an incorrigible imp, utterly without a sense of danger
+under any circumstances her experience had so far led her to encounter,
+and, apart from that, a compound--a furious compound on either side--of
+jealousy and affection. It would, perhaps, be more just to say affection
+and jealousy, for Bill's heart was hot with love for those for whom
+she cared at all, and her jealousy was but the natural product of
+her affection. It was not until the boat reached Colombo that Bill
+condescended to accept a solitary advance from Paul. Until then she
+resented every minute he spent in her sister's society and every word
+he addressed to her, but once enlisted she became a sort of
+lovers' watch-dog, and held all intruders at bay.
+
+The steamer was lying for four-and-twenty hours in the harbour at
+Colombo, and everybody who was at liberty was delighted to snatch a day
+ashore. Paul and Madge and Bill made the customary globe-trotter's round
+They lunched at the hotel at Point de Galles, saw the usual conjurers
+and snake-charmers, drove to the usual Buddhist temple, dined in town,
+and went aboard again. Bill, who had hitherto proved an unmitigated
+nuisance, behaved with a fine discretion throughout the day, and it was
+only half an hour after her appointed bedtime that she pointedly made
+Paul aware of her existence. He was lounging in a deck-chair and smoking
+a cigar when the young lady took a place at his side.
+
+'Look here,' she said, with the boyish off-handedness which belonged to
+her. 'I want you and me to be friends.'
+
+'Why not?' said Paul. 'I'm agreeable if you are.'
+
+'Have I been good to-day?' the imp asked, laying her head upon his
+shoulder, and turning up those starlike, unfathomable eyes of hers.
+
+'You have behaved like an angel for temper,' Paul responded, 'and like
+an elderly diplomatist for discretion.'
+
+'You are satisfied?' said Bill, rolling her golden curls in her
+Tam-o'-Shanter cap.
+
+'I am not merely satisfied, William,' Paul responded. 'Words fail me to
+express my gratitude.'
+
+'Don't you begin to chaff me,' said Bill. 'If you do, I shan't make the
+bargain I was going to.'
+
+'I assure you,' said Paul, 'that I was never more serious in my life.
+I swear it by the most sacred of man's possessions--gold. This is an
+English sovereign.'
+
+'For me?' asked Bill, her lambent eyes regarding him as if no thought of
+greed or bribery could touch the angel's soul which shone through them.
+
+'For you,' said Paul.
+
+'Right oh!' Bill replied, biting at the coin with her milk-white teeth,
+and then bestowing it in her pocket. 'Now, if you'll promise never to
+leave Madge alone about one thing, I'll be as good--as good--you can't
+guess anything as good as I'll be.'
+
+'There's no such thing as a one-sided bargain,' said Paul, 'and you
+must let me know what you expect from me in answer to this astonishing
+confession.'
+
+'Don't you chaff me,' said Bill, still rolling her golden head upon his
+shoulder, and beaming on him with those eyes of innocence. 'I might be
+having a sweetheart of my own one of these days. Don't you think that's
+likely?'
+
+'I don't mind betting,' Paul answered, 'that you'll have fifty--'
+
+Bill sat up straight in her deck-chair, clasped her hands with a
+vivid gesture, and looked skyward with a glance pure as the heavens
+themselves.
+
+'What a lark!' she breathed--' oh, what a lark! Fifty? Do you think
+they'd all come together?' she asked with a sudden eagerness, as if her
+life depended on the answer.
+
+'Say, five at a time,' said Paul--'ten per annum; that will give you
+five years to deal with them, beginning, we will say, about two years
+from now.'
+
+'But that's where I want to come in,' said Bill 'I want to begin at
+once.'
+
+'There is no need to be in a hurry,' Paul answered. 'There is plenty of
+time before you.'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Bill thoughtfully. 'But, then, you see, I don't want to
+waste any of it. Now, I just want to tell you what I want you to do for
+me. I want you to din it into Madge's ears, morning, noon, and night,
+that it's time that I should do my hair up and wear long frocks.'
+
+'And if I undertake that mission?' Paul asked
+
+'We're friends,' cried Bill, rising and holding out her hand 'You'll
+see,' she added, 'I can be just as nice as I have been nasty.'
+
+From this time forward the voyage was like a happy dream. Suez and
+Naples and Gibraltar were full of interest and wonder to the untravelled
+Madge, and the Mediterranean was smooth as a pond through all the lovely
+days and nights of the European spring. The Bay of Biscay so far belied
+its stormy reputation that there was scarcely a heave upon its surface,
+and at last the shores of England came in sight, sacred and beautiful to
+the eyes of a girl born and bred in the Colonies. Then came Tilbury, and
+at Tilbury brother George was waiting to bid his sisters welcome.
+
+Paul was happy and content enough to be in the mood to like anybody and
+everybody, and an inward suggestion that he was not favourably
+impressed with brother George presented itself only to be discounted and
+ignominiously turned out of doors at once. As Tennyson has said, 'It is
+not true that second thoughts are best, but first and third, which are
+a riper first.' Brother George was undeniably good-looking after his
+fashion. He was well set up and a little over the middle height. He was
+very perfectly groomed, and had very fine, regular, white teeth which he
+was a little too fond of showing in a rather mechanical smile. His eyes
+were rather too closely set either for beauty or for character, and his
+manner was a trifle over-suave.
+
+Bill, who had been promoted after her own desires, fell upon him like
+an avalanche, and being at first unrecognised in her aspect of grown-up
+young lady, embarrassed brother George considerably. But there was such
+a laugh at this as set all four in high spirits, and there were so many
+questions and answers that the time of waiting for the train passed in a
+flash.
+
+The quartette lunched together at a restaurant in town, and brother
+George carried off his sisters to the apartments he had secured for them
+in the house in which he lodged. But before he went a little episode,
+which was afterwards renewed in various forms until it grew monotonous,
+occurred. Brother George naturally played the host at the restaurant,
+and spread a generous and delicate feast, but on the presentation of the
+bill was struck through with chagrin at the discovery that he had lost
+his purse. That he had brought it from home was beyond cavil in his
+mind, for had he not paid his cab-fare and the other expenses from it?
+It was an awkward beginning of an acquaintance, as he allowed with
+an embarrassed smile, but if Mr. Armstrong would be his banker for a
+day---- Mr. Armstrong was happy enough to be willing to be any man's
+banker at that moment, and brother George borrowed a ten-pound note
+with many expressions of regret and obligation. He forgot this little
+transaction so completely, that it was not so much as mentioned for a
+year or two; but brother George gave clear proof later on that he was
+not the man to leave unworked any social patch which at the first stroke
+of the hoe would yield so promising a little harvest, and first and last
+quite a handsome income in a small way accrued to brother George at the
+expense of brother George's sister's lover.
+
+It is not when a man is happy, and the errors of his life have not yet
+yielded their inevitable crop of suffering, that conscience bestirs
+itself. Things went smoothly with Paul Armstrong. His plays prospered
+and yielded rich returns. A volume of verses gave him something more
+than the reputation of the average minor poet There was no more popular
+man at his clubs than he, and, if he had cared for it, he might have
+been something of a social lion. As it was, he met many notable people
+on terms of intimacy, and reckoned himself as rich in friendships as any
+man alive; and, when the six months' probation was over, he and Madge
+went quietly away together to spend in Paris a honeymoon which had not
+been consecrated by any rite of the Church, and entered upon a wedded
+life which was not even sanctioned by the registrar. Madge became
+informally Mrs. Paul Armstrong, and, under that style and title, was
+introduced to a dozen of Paul's intimates who were in no doubt as to
+the facts of the case, and to hundreds of other people who accepted
+the pretence without a thought of inquiry. The whole family lived
+together--Madge and her mother, Bill and brother George--and things went
+smoothly for two or three prosperous and happy years. In mere prosperity
+and happiness there is little to record, but the heart of the Exile in
+the mountains yearned over that vanished time in a bitter and unavailing
+regret. How sweet it had been! With how tender a gradation the first
+passion of delight in possession had softened into friendship, and
+the calm love of happily wedded people, and the delicious intimate
+camaraderie which springs of the unbroken companionship of board and
+bed, and the sharing of every little confidence of life!
+
+The past was obliterated; it was wiped out as cleanly as if it had
+been written on a slate, and a wet sponge had been passed over it.
+Practically it was forgotten, but the obliterated record sprang to light
+again with an unlooked-for, dreadful swiftness.
+
+Bill by this time had developed into Miss Hampton, and was a grown-up
+young lady in real earnest, with lovers by the dozen. She and Paul were
+chums, and she had no secrets from him. Her face alone was bright enough
+to have made sunshine in any house; but it happened one day that Paul,
+returning from rehearsal, found it blank with astonishment and pain. She
+had evidently been waiting and listening for him; for at the instant at
+which his latch-key clicked in the lock, she threw the hall-door open,
+and, as he entered, closed it silently, almost stealthily, behind him.
+Then, with her hand upon his shoulder, she led him to his study--the
+plainly furnished little workshop which looked out on the trim suburban
+garden. This was the room in which he had spent the richest and most
+prosperous hours of the only tranquil years he had known, and it was
+here that he was fated to meet the death-blow to his happiness.
+
+'What is the matter?' he asked--'what has happened? Where is Madge?'
+
+'She is in her own room,' Phyllis answered, her eyes wide with terror,
+and her pretty Australian roses all vanished from her cheeks. 'Mother
+and she have locked themselves in together, and Madge is crying her
+heart out Oh, Paul, Paul,' she cried, clasping her hands, 'what have you
+done?'
+
+With that she broke into sudden weeping, and Paul stood amazed, with a
+chill terror, as yet unrecognised, clutching at his heart.
+
+'What have I done?' he echoed--' what _have_ I done, dear?'
+
+'Done!' she flashed at him, drawing her hands away from her streaming
+eyes, and throwing them passionately apart 'Oh, Paul, we have all loved
+you so, and honoured you so, and now----'
+
+She cast herself into an arm-chair with a reckless abandonment, and
+cried bitterly. The chill hand at Paul's heart grew icy, but even yet he
+did not recognise his fear.
+
+'For mercy's sake, Bill, tell me!'
+
+She flashed to her feet in a second, and looked at him from head to foot
+with a burning scorn.
+
+'Never call me by that name again,'she said, through her clenched white
+teeth. 'You ask me what you have done? You have ruined Madge's life and
+broken her heart, and mine,' she cried, striking her clenched hand upon
+her breast--'and mine!'
+
+She went raging up and down the room like a lovely fury, her hair
+disordered, her eyes flashing, and her cheeks new-crimsoned with anger.
+
+'Tell me--tell me,' he besought her, 'what has happened.'
+
+'This has happened,' she answered, with a sudden tense quiet: 'your wife
+has been here--your wife, an overdressed, painted French trull, so drunk
+that she could barely stand.'
+
+'Good God!' said Paul. He laid his hand upon a bookshelf, and stood
+swaying there as if he were about to fall. 'What brought her here?' he
+gasped.
+
+'You don't deny it?' said the girl, speaking with the same tense quiet
+as before.
+
+'No, no,' said Paul, 'I don't deny it What brought her here?'
+
+'She came to assert her rights,' said Phyllis, with a biting
+indignation. 'She came to warn us that she was setting the law in
+motion, and that she would drag Madge's name--you hear? Madge's
+name--through the mud of the Divorce Court; and only this morning I
+loved you, and respected you, and believed in you.'
+
+'I must see Madge,' said Paul.
+
+'You shall not!' she cried, flashing to the door, and setting her back
+against it.
+
+But the door was opened from without, and Madge was here. Paul opened
+his arms to her, and she laid her pale face against his breast.
+
+'I have feared it always,' she said, 'and it has come at last. My poor,
+poor Paul 'how you must have suffered!'
+
+'Your poor, poor Paul,' said Phyllis, in a voice of bitterest disdain,
+'is a very fitting object for your pity. My personal recommendation is
+that your poor Paul should drown himself.'
+
+'You don't understand, dear,' Madge answered her--' you don't
+understand. Paul has done me no wrong. We did not take you into our
+confidence, because you were too young; but there has been no disguise
+among the rest of us. I knew of this before Paul and I resolved to spend
+our lives together. Mother knew it; George knew it; you know it now,
+dear. Will it part us, Bill?'
+
+The girl's face changed from angry scorn to pure bewilderment, and then
+again to pity.
+
+'Come here, Madge,' she cried, opening her arms wide, and speaking with
+a sobbing voice; 'come here.'
+
+She hugged her sister fiercely, and cried over her.
+
+'I can understand,' she said--'I can understand.' She repeated the words
+again and again. 'It isn't a pretty thing to have to face; but it's your
+trouble, darling, and we must stick together. As for me,' she added,
+with a new outbreak of tears, which a laugh made half hysteric, 'I shall
+stick like wax.'
+
+Annette's threat was no _brutum fulmen_, as the society newspapers soon
+began to show. Paragraphs appeared here and there indicating that the
+unprosperous matrimonial affairs of a popular playwright would shortly
+excite the interest of the public; and one day Paul, driving along
+the Strand, and finding his cab momentarily arrested by a block in the
+traffic, was frozen to the marrow by the sight of a newspaper placard
+which by way of sole contents bore the words, 'Who is the real Mrs.
+Armstrong? Divorce proceedings instituted against a famous playwright.'
+
+At first his thought was: 'Some enemy has done this;' but he knew the
+journal and most of the influential members of its staff, and he could
+not guess that he counted an enemy among them. He had dined with the
+editor a week before at the same club-table, and had found him not less
+cordial than he had ever been before.
+
+'I suppose the man is justified,' Paul thought when the power of
+reflection returned to him. 'The whole story is on its way to the public
+ears, and neither he nor any other man can stop it It's his business to
+be first in the field with it if he can.'
+
+He turned his cab homeward, for he had no heart to face the people he
+had meant to meet, and on his way, just to gratify the natural instinct
+of self-torture, he bought a copy of the journal, and read there that
+Messrs. Berry and Smythe, the well-known firm of solicitors in Lincoln's
+Inn, had that day filed a petition for divorce against Mr. Paul
+Armstrong, the well-known dramatist, and that remarkable revelations
+were expected.
+
+For these past few years home had seemed Paradise. He had never for any
+fraction of an instant wavered in his love, and use and wont had helped
+to set a seal of sanctity upon it With the passage of the months and
+years, with the growth of many intimate acquaintanceships, and not a few
+closer and dearer ties about him, home had grown to be as sacred to
+him as if the union on which it was founded had been blessed by all
+the priests of all the churches. No purer and more tranquil spirit of
+affectionate loyalty had breathed in any home in England, and now the
+balm of his soul was vitriol, and that which had been the bread of life
+to him was steeped in gall and wormwood. The very honest purpose of his
+life, his constant and sober pursuit of a worthy fame, recoiled upon him
+here as if it had been in itself a crime. Not to have striven, to have
+been content with a dull obscurity of fortune, to have wasted his days
+in idleness and his nights in foolish revel, would have seemed a happier
+course to him. And as it was the better part of life which chastised
+him most cruelly, so it was the best and worthiest affection he had ever
+known which turned upon him with a cup of poison in its hand and bade
+him drink it to the dregs. Life and the world are so made that only
+the most desolate can suffer by themselves. If by any trick of magic he
+could have borne his chastisement alone, he would have accepted it with
+something like a scorn of fate.
+
+He had discharged his cab within a hundred yards of home, and had read
+the stinging paragraph beneath a lamp-post almost at his own doorstep.
+He entered the house noiselessly, and from Madge's music-room there
+floated down to him the sound of Chopin's great Funeral March. She
+played this and some other favourites of her own as few musicians play
+them, for music had been the one delight of her life, and but for the
+fleeting theatrical ambition, and for Paul, she might have become famous
+as an executant He stood in the hall to listen as the alternate wail and
+triumph filled and thrilled the air, and thinking that she was alone, he
+strolled silently to his dressing-room, and then in smoking-jacket and
+slippers went to join her. Except for the glow of the fire the room was
+in darkness, and a voice which came out of the darkness startled him.
+
+'I had prepared myself to wait for hours,' said the voice; and Ralston
+emerged from a shadowed corner with an outstretched hand--Ralston, with
+his big sagacious head, all unexpectedly silver-white, and moustache
+and beard of snow, but with the same old hand-grip, and the same
+half-dictatorial, half-affectionate tone. Madge struck a resolving
+chord, rose, and with a kiss and a whispered 'I know the news,' slipped
+from the room before he could make an effort to detain her.
+
+'Can we have a light on things?' said Ralston, in that hoarsely musical
+growl of his. He struck a match as he spoke, and lit the gas, and then
+marched sturdily to the door and closed it. 'You know me--you, Paul
+Armstrong,' he said, turning to face the master of the house. 'I have
+spent a fighting life, but I have never known a downright murderous fit
+till now. Have you seen this?'
+
+'Yes,' said Paul,' I've seen it.'
+
+The journal Ralston haled from his pocket and held towards him was a
+fellow to that he had just thrown away in the street.
+
+'The carrion-hunting hound!' cried Ralston; 'I read this, and I came
+straight here. I knew there was no hiding it from your wife. I say "your
+wife," and I hold by the word until faith and friendship are as dead as
+last year's leaves. She had to see it, Armstrong, and it was better that
+a friend should bring it to her. Now, mind you, we who know her rally
+round. We may be only two or three, but we are a fighting colony. I am
+by way of being a cleric, but I don't always cut my linguistic coat
+to suit my cloth, and my word at this hour is, Damn the bestial
+ecclesiastical bigotry which seeks to tie the bodies of men and women
+together when their souls are sundered! Here is a man reported within
+this last fortnight as having been arrested the day after his marriage
+at a registrar's office, and as having been since then condemned to
+penal servitude for life. Is that fact a relief to the woman who was
+his victim? Not a bit of it Let her contract a new marriage, and the law
+will indict her for bigamy. She must live in loneliness, or be classed
+with harlots. Here is a man I know, an outlying parishioner of mine,
+whose wife is hopelessly and incurably insane. Is there any release
+from the marriage-bond for him? Not a chance of it. There are a hundred
+thousand people of this country, men and women, so saturated and
+demoralized with drink that only an overwhelming Christian pity could
+bear to touch 'em with a barge-pole--husbands intolerable to wives,
+wives intolerable to husbands, live corpses with corruption distilling
+at each pore--and this filthy marriage law, which is the last relic
+of Christianity's worst barbarism, binds quick and wholesome flesh to
+stinking death, and bids them fester together in the legal pit. I set
+one honest man's curse upon that shameless and abominable creed, and I
+would not take my hand away from my seal though I went to the stake for
+setting it there.'
+
+He broke into a stormy laugh, and clapped Paul boisterously upon the
+shoulder.
+
+'And now,' he said, with a sudden change of voice and manner, 'that we
+have got rid of the froth of passion, let me offer you one cup of the
+sound wine of reason. Fight this business through, Paul Armstrong. Don't
+give way by half a barleycorn. The story, as it tells against you, will
+be made known. The truth, as your friends know it, must come out as
+well. If I had time to read up for the bar, and pass my examinations,
+I would ask nothing better than to be your counsel. Face the music,
+Armstrong, and you may help the cause of justice. It is time that this
+union of quick and dead were done with, and that the ecclesiastic fetish
+rag which makes its wickedness respectable were burned.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+There were the usual legal delays, and public interest in the case would
+have slumbered had it not been for the newspapers. But a steady-going
+England, on whose John Bull qualities of reticence and solidity we have
+been prone to pride ourselves, does occasionally betray a quicker and
+more curious spirit than it commonly desires to be credited with, and
+there is no pole to stir it from its hybernating sleep which reaches
+so far and punches the fat ribs so soundly as the pole of scandal. The
+press was in one of its occasional Jedburgh justice moods, and was ready
+to afford impartial trial when it had hanged its victim, and not before.
+
+Paul Armstrong was adjudged a Lothario of the wickeder sort, a purposed
+betrayer of hearts and destinies. 'If, as the complainant in this
+melancholy case avers,' or 'If, as the depositions already filed would
+appear to indicate,' the defendant was an unlimited rascal; and if that
+were so, he _was_ an unlimited rascal, and there an end. A thousand
+men file past the bar of official and unofficial justice without much
+comment They are branded, more or less justly, in accord with their
+deserts, and having been first ignored, are altogether forgotten. But
+every here and there, for some scarcely notable peculiarity, a man or
+woman is fairly hunted down by the moral pack, mangled and branded,
+as it were, on a noble moral speculation, and left to quiver for the
+remnant of his lifetime.
+
+In these days Paul Armstrong pondered much and often over the saying of
+the man who had been his master in the arts of fiction and the drama:
+'Men reserve their bitterest repentances for their best actions.' If
+only he had played the man of the world towards Annette instead of
+playing the Quixote, how different a position he would have held towards
+the moral pack! To marry your mistress under no compulsion, but merely
+in the desire to relieve the last sufferings of a parting soul, to
+sacrifice a year or two of pulsing ambitions to this act of charity, had
+not in itself appeared an act of wickedness. Nor had it seemed wholly
+intolerable from his own point of view that, after a struggle
+prolonged beyond the needs of decency, he should have run away from the
+contaminations which belonged inevitably to a life spent in the society
+of an incurable dipsomaniac. Nor could he as yet blame himself overmuch
+if he had at last yielded to the claims of that domesticity which
+offered him involuntary shelter: the invitations of a home of love and
+confidence; an atmosphere in which no cloud hovered which could not be
+puffed away in a cloud of tobacco smoke, or shattered into nothing by
+the clear breath of a single friendly laugh. It was not quite an
+honest view of the case--no man surveying his own circumstances is ever
+entirely honest--but to himself the question was convincing, Who would
+not have hastened from that hell to find this heaven?
+
+Ralston at least stood undauntedly by him, and inveighed with anger
+against what he proclaimed to be an unnatural law.
+
+'Do you know Constantinople?' he asked one evening as the two sat
+together.
+
+'Yes,' Paul answered; 'I know it tourist fashion. I stayed a week there
+once.'
+
+'You remember the tribes of yellow dogs who make night hideous?' Ralston
+questioned. 'They hunt in packs, and eat any raffle of the streets which
+may be thrown to 'em. I've seen 'em wolfing cardboard boxes that have
+been swept out of the drapers' shops in the early morning, the poor
+hungry devils! They'd fall across any intruder from another parish
+and crunch him hide and bones. But they never attack one another, and
+there's no record of one yellow dog who tried to eat another yellow dog
+who belonged to the same gang. There's a mighty difference between the
+canine and the human, eh? You're one of our breed, Armstrong--yellow
+dog of the yellow dog quill-driving tribe--and your comrades haven't the
+gentlemanly instinct of the Constantinople cur. They get round you and
+worry you,' he declaimed, rising, and striding about the room, with
+an occasional double-handed clutch at the lapels of his coat, his one
+gesture of rage--'they worry you for their twopenny-halfpenny mouthful
+of lineage, and they'd gnaw their own mothers out of their coffins for
+the same reward.'
+
+'As bad as that?' asked Paul, with a dreary little laugh.
+
+'As bad as that, sir!' Ralston declared wrathfully, though he too
+laughed a moment at his own vehemence.
+
+But the fighting Ralston was on fire with his theme, and returned to it
+often.
+
+'You had a namesake once,' he said, 'who was an Apostle. He talked with
+a centurion, who told him, "With a great price I obtained this freedom."
+With a great price! I wonder if it were like the price we pay for what
+we call the freedom of the press. I fought for that in my own day,
+fought and suffered, and paid in coin and heart's blood, and I have
+asked myself since if I am glad or sorry that I won. Are we the better
+for having bred this vulture crowd?'
+
+The hot heart of the advocate warmed the cold heart of the sufferer from
+time to time, but neither long nor often. The coals of anger will
+not burn freely on any honest hearth when the conscience of the owner
+compels him to turn down the damper every other minute.
+
+The cause in the Law Courts lingered, and the seasons changed Paul's
+friendships stopped away--not by ones or twos, but in battalions. Poor
+little Madge could go nowhere, and ceased to wish to go anywhere, to
+find herself brushing against offended skirts whose owners drew them
+away from pollution.
+
+'In all my foolish life,' Paul told Ralston, 'I have known one
+thoroughly good woman.'
+
+'Lucky bargee!' said Ralston. 'Not one man in a million has your
+chance.'
+
+'One woman,' Paul went on, 'as pure as a daisy, who could surrender her
+whole life for the sake of love--a creature who never spoke an unkind
+word or thought an unkind thought of any living sister, or dead one, for
+that matter.'
+
+He choked. He could go no further for the time.
+
+'I know her,' said Ralston--'I know her.'
+
+'And women,' said Paul, 'who are not worthy to unlace her shoes
+cold-shoulder her, and look at her with contempt. I dare cry the history
+of two or three on the housetops.'
+
+'And if you dared--what good?' Ralston asked.
+
+'There is no God,' cried Paul; 'there is no justice in the world.'
+
+'There is a God,' said Ralston, 'and there is very little justice. Who
+are we that we should cry out for justice? We are here to learn. And
+look here, Paul Armstrong: the biggest and hardest lesson set us is to
+learn long views.'
+
+'Long views?' said Paul, staring at him.
+
+'Long views,' Ralston repeated steadily. 'I know what I'm talking about
+We are learners, and learners in the lowest class. That's nonsense,' he
+corrected himself, 'and I hate exaggeration, though I am guilty of it a
+hundred times a day. But we are learners, and, whether our class is high
+or low makes little difference to the fact that there is much to learn.
+The man who is the stronger and the better for his trouble is the
+scholar who goes to the top of the class. Look ahead, man, and ask
+whether Paul Armstrong is to be a firmer or a flabbier small element in
+God's great universe for what is now befalling him. Your own action has
+chosen you to be a sort of martyr in a big cause. We are on the fringe
+of the sex-fight, so far; but before our children are grown men and
+women, the battle will be in full swing. We have got to settle this
+question of the sanctity of marriage. What a certain kind of animal
+calls "free love" is of the beast and bestial; but a reasoned and loyal
+love between man and woman is a beautiful and noble thing, and it is not
+the less beautiful and noble because it has not been sanctified by
+the payment of seven-and-sixpence to the Inland Revenue. You have a
+principle to fight for, and you have Madge to fight for. By the God I
+worship,' he cried, in sudden wrath, 'I would fight for the principle
+against death itself, and for a woman like Madge I would die at a slow
+fire.'
+
+'But, Ralston,' Paul besought him--'Ralston, you don't understand. You
+find animation there; but it is there my weakness lies. Do you think I
+care for myself?'
+
+'Of course I do,' said Ralston. 'If you hadn't cared for yourself you
+would never have brought a child like Madge into such an evil as this.'
+
+'That's true enough,' said Paul; 'that's truth itself.'
+
+He laid his elbows on the table, and leaned his head disconsolately upon
+his hands. His companion shook him by the shoulder in the rough amity
+which men use with one another.
+
+'Look here, Armstrong: willy-nilly, you're the champion of a great
+cause, and you have the sweetest woman in the world to fight for. Don't
+flaunt the flag insolently--in the present temper of the public that
+will never do--but stand by it all the same. So far as you're concerned,
+Armstrong, it's a selfish accident that turns you Squire of Dames; but
+you're in the tourney now, and you've got to behave respectably.'
+
+'If you mean by behaving respectably that I've got to hold by Madge, and
+live all this down if I can, and do my best to flutter through life on a
+broken wing, I am with you.'
+
+'I mean that, and more than that,' said Ralston. 'Turn your next play on
+this theme; turn your next book on it. Never mind the odium of seeming
+to fight a selfish battle; you're past that now. Your story is that
+the man mires his feet in the ordinary manner, that he makes a fool of
+himself in the usual fashion; that the saving woman comes to him pure
+and clean, and does her healthful, beautiful work for him at such a
+cost as you know of. Whether her life is tragedy modified or tragedy
+unalloyed rests with the story-teller; but you're there to champion that
+innocence.'
+
+'You recoiled from a little tube of manuscript once,' said Paul, 'as if
+it had held a poisonous explosive. Do you remember? Ralston laughed and
+nodded. 'If you're bolder now, I'll show you something.'
+
+'I am bolder now,' said Ralston; and Paul, leaving him for a moment,
+raced upstairs, and, having made a brief search in his study, returned
+with a big sheaf of type-written matter in his hand.
+
+'There is my case,' he said. 'Old Darco calls it madness to challenge
+such a truth in such a fashion. Weldon will take the piece and play it.
+He will produce it anonymously by preference, but as I choose. I choose
+to have my fling at the world, and to take it without disguise. Tell me
+when you have read it.'
+
+'I am your man,' cried Ralston, catching at the paper.
+
+'I don't know whether I have done well or ill in doing it,' said Paul. 'I
+suppose there never was a writer who didn't hawk the secret of his soul
+about the streets--if he had a secret and a soul.'
+
+'More of this hereafter,' Ralston said, and bore away the manuscript
+that night.
+
+There had been little need to spur Paul to courage on this matter. The
+wiser thing might have been to counsel him to moderation. He had set his
+back to his corner already.
+
+But just hereabouts a small thing happened which had, as small things
+will, an undue influence upon his mind. There was loose on Fleet Street
+at this time an extraordinary devil of a man of genius whose appropriate
+real name was Wild-blood.
+
+He had dropped that too characteristic patronymic, and had renamed
+himself, with a touch of mocking cynicism which only those who knew
+him understood, Wilder. What scholarship was possible for six- or
+seven-and-twenty was his. That he was more or less crazed with much
+learning and more drink was generally understood of him. Men of small
+originality and some memory said of Wilder that he could knock a slang
+song into Greek iambics in five minutes. His most fervent admirers were,
+perhaps, poor judges of Greek iambics. Fleet Street may at one time have
+been familiar with that kind of thing, but is not nowadays. But Wilder's
+reputation soared on higher voices than those of the journalistic
+crowd, and he was, beyond dispute, a person of genius--one of those odd
+distorted bundles of broken nerve who help to establish the theory that
+fine thinking, a noble vocabulary, deep scholarship, and foolish living
+are neighbours and hard to separate.
+
+With this very queer fish Paul had established a certain intimacy. The
+man, as a matter of course, was periodically hard up, and he had come
+to the stage when it was here five shillings and there half a crown as
+a charge for the charm of his society with the most casual of
+acquaintances. He made his breakfast on a salt-spoonful of cayenne and a
+glass of brandy, and he passed from intellectual godhood to a hiccuping
+imbecility in a breath. At from four to five in the afternoon he carried
+his lofty head and a prematurely pimpled countenance into some unwatched
+obscurity. He habitually emerged from this hiding-place within an hour
+of midnight, and thence his flight was an owl's.
+
+The social chill which surrounded Paul's household had grown arctic, and
+Madge, Mrs. Hampton, and Phyllis had all been bundled away to Ostend,
+in a sunken identity. The house in which the cause of disturbance had
+so long been unreasonably happy was closed. The servants had been
+dismissed, and a commissionaire and his wife lived in the basement. Paul
+had taken lodgings at a Fleet Street hostelry, and thither in the dead
+of night came Wilder and other night-birds, to the much disturbance of
+the porter at the grille. It chanced one night that Wilder came with
+a declaration that he had found his soul's salvation through beer. His
+stream of life should flow, so he declared, through Burton-on-Trent. He
+was done with noxious liquids, and proposed to bathe his spirit clear
+in the vats of Bass and Allsopp. Wilder was-not outside the sphere of
+reformation, and Guinness would share with the others the credit of his
+uprising. He drank a tankard or two of each and either as an evidence of
+good faith, and he left an hour after midnight, more sober than Paul had
+ever known him at such a time. He had talked a heap of brilliant sense
+and nonsense, and had borrowed two half crowns. Paul went to bed
+almost regretting the loss of even this mad companionship, and tossed,
+half-dozing, on a shifting sea of troubles. Suddenly, when he had lost
+all consciousness of time and place, there came a thundering summons
+at his door, and in answer to his startled call there came in a huge
+policeman in a greatcoat and a helmet, and behind him a quaking waiter
+with a candle in a glass funnel. The officer appealed to a piece of
+paper he carried in his hand.
+
+'Paul Armstrong,' he read, with a brogue as wide as the ocean. 'Is that
+you?'
+
+'That is my name,' said Paul.
+
+'Then ye're wanted,' said the official.
+
+'Wanted? Where?'
+
+'At Bow Street,'the official answered stolidly.
+
+Paul rolled round to consult his watch. It indicated three o'clock
+within a minute or so.
+
+'What on earth am I wanted at Bow Street for?' he asked in great
+bewilderment.
+
+'Party of the name of Wilder,' said the officer, referring once more to
+his paper. 'Says you're his first cousin, and that you'll bail him out.'
+
+'Wilder? First cousin?' His mind was fogged with broken sleep. 'Oh, that
+fellow! What has he been doing?'
+
+The man in uniform consulted his paper again, and read out:
+
+'Dhrunk and dishortherly.'
+
+'And he had the cheek to send you here and to say that I'm his first
+cousin?'
+
+'Yes, sorr.'
+
+'Well,' said Paul, with a brief laugh, 'I don't know that I've anything
+better to do. Wait downstairs whilst I dress, and have a cab ready if
+you can find one. Give the officer a drink, waiter.'
+
+In a weary fashion he was tickled by this incident; and when he had
+made a hasty toilette he descended, and was driven to Bow Street, where,
+after a spell of waiting, he was introduced to his 'first cousin' in a
+corridor.
+
+'What's all this, Wilder?'he asked.
+
+'It's this, me man,' said Wilder. 'I took a fancy to declaim a favourite
+little bit of Euripides in Endell Street, and a uniformed ass came along
+and ran me in. And being penniless as I am----'
+
+'Penniless!' said Paul 'You had five shillings to my certain knowledge.'
+
+'Oh, I had,' said Wilder, 'but I met some poor devil that was harder
+up than I am--at least, he said so--and I bestowed it on him with my
+blessing.'
+
+'We know your name, Mr. Armstrong,' said the officer who had the man of
+genius in his charge, 'and if you'll be surety that the gentleman will be
+here at ten o'clock this morning, he can go.'
+
+'You want my word for that only?'
+
+'That will be enough, sir.'
+
+'Very well; he shall be here.'
+
+'He shall be here,' said Wilder, 'and the idiot who brought him here
+shall have a lesson.'
+
+'You take my tip, sir,' said the officer. 'You was pretty fairly
+full, and you was very noisy, and you cracked on pretty awful. Talk
+of eloquence,' said the officer, interrupting himself to turn to Paul.
+'I've heard a thing or two in my time--it comes here, you know, sir, in
+the way of business--but I've never met anybody as could hold a candle
+to this gentleman.'
+
+Wilder smiled, and pulled up a dirty apology for a collar with an air of
+self-applause.
+
+'But what I want to advise is this, sir,' said the officer genially:
+'Say nothing, and it's five bob and costs, and there's an end of it;
+make a song about it, and it's forty shillings or a month, and it gets
+into all the papers. For this is a shop, sir, where the more you say
+the more you pay. And that's the truth about justice in a general way
+throughout the land, and so you'll find, sir, if you'll take the trouble
+to look into it. The more you say the more you pay. That's the fruit
+of thirty years' experience, sir, and you'll find it pretty sound Say
+nothing, and a little thing blows over. Make a talk about it, and it
+lasts, as you might say, for ever. The more you say, the more you pay.'
+
+Paul was not greatly inclined to idle superstition as a general thing,
+but the thrice-repeated saying stuck to him. The fancy came into his
+mind that he had been aroused thus oddly in the middle of the night on
+purpose that he might hear it, and have it dinned into his mind by
+force of repetition. There was no reason under heaven why he should
+have attended the insolent call of Mr. Wilder, and he had not even
+been conscious of a kindly impulse towards the man. There was a sort of
+providential finger laid upon his own sense here. Of course, he denied
+the belief, but it was active with him none the less. It was so active
+that he resigned all the preparations he had contemplated for his own
+defence, and absented himself from London.
+
+During his absence the case of Armstrong against Armstrong was heard in
+the Divorce Court. A Boanerges of a Queen's Counsel was entrusted with
+Annette's side of it. He made a speech, and that speech was reported in
+a hundred journals. Had it been true, the unlucky Paul would have been a
+comrade for the devil, but there was no defence, and it passed as true.
+Paul read the speech, and came tearing back express to London in a
+tumult of rage and resentment. He was a day behind the fair, and could
+do nothing. The world seemed to ring of him, and he had abandoned all
+means of redress. He was publicly shunned, and shunned for ever.
+
+So fruitful may be the smallest accident of life that this chance
+episode with the drunken Wilder and the foolish resolve to which it led
+seemed to have darkened Paul's skies for good and all. He might have
+beaten Boanerges on every point save one, and have come out of the fight
+with but one wound in place of a hundred, and that very far from fatal
+Now he felt stabbed to death, and seemed to bleed at every pore.
+
+The manager who was under contract with him to produce the comedy the
+first manuscript of which he had placed in Ralston's hands, called to
+see him, and advised strongly against production--at all events, for the
+present The suffering fool was furious, and would listen to no reason.
+
+'I put three thousand pounds behind it,' he cried. 'I give you that as
+a guarantee. The play is a good play, and the public will listen to it,
+slander or no slander.'
+
+Playgoers remember the first nightof 'Myra'--the yells, howls, whistles,
+cat-calls which made the whole three acts a pantomime in dumb show. The
+moral tiger was awake.
+
+The play ran in spite of all and everything, and ran at the author's
+cost It came to a sudden end in the middle of a week, when the author's
+last cheque was returned with an official 'N. S.' marked upon it The
+lately prosperous dramatist was ruined.
+
+Thus the man and his memories are growing nearer and nearer to each
+other, and very soon they must meet. There is yet but a year to traverse
+before the Dreamer and the Dream stand face to lace with actual Fact and
+Time. It is a year of frustrated hope and barren effort, of surrenders
+and shames. It is a year of anonymity for one thing, for his name
+is worse than worthless to him, and he hides it. There is a book yet
+extant, written in a black gall which is made fluent to the pen by a
+distillation of wormwood, and this is Paul Armstrong's latest expression
+of his views of the world, which, if the book were true, one would take
+as a vast and daily injustice, in which there is no saving grace of any
+sort whatever. Ralston alone knew in what fiery haste this bitter volume
+was gathered out of the desert of the writer's soul. It served one
+purpose, since it provided Madge with at least a staff of silver
+with which to beat the wolf from the door. The wild beast bayed and
+threatened, but it never actually crossed the threshold. The discredited
+man kept himself alive by scraps of anonymous journalism, until a
+half-chance suggestion of fortune bore him away to the United States as
+a member of a theatrical company of no great merit, which clung together
+through desperately failing fortunes for a month or two, and then,
+dissolving, left him stranded.
+
+He floated, a pseudonymous unit, acting, writing, lecturing. Somehow or
+other the weekly two or three pounds reached Madge, and the wolf still
+howled outside her door and found no entrance.
+
+When the spiritual anatomy of a man is displaced and the gall-bladder
+takes on the function of the heart, it is far from being well with him
+at the moment, and in these days it was very far from being well with
+Paul Armstrong. Yet the jaundiced fit served its turn, and even
+whilst its anguish burned and nauseated, he began to ask one wholesome
+question: 'For whose shortcoming, for whose wrong-doing, for whose
+virtues turned vicious, and whose vices tuned to airs of virtue, do I
+thus suffer?' The answer was at first confused and loud. Annette's
+name was noisy in it Claudia's sounded there. So did Gertrude's. And
+of course the poor writhing worm must needs arraign Fate, Destiny,
+the Maker of the Earth, whatever It or He might be. But these voices
+stilled, because, when all was said and done, the man was not wholly
+a fool, and out of his heart came the wounding answer to his question:
+'You, Paul Armstrong--you and none other! Neither this false friend,
+nor that fraudulent lover, nor any Destiny whatsoever, but just Paul
+Armstrong, to whom this bundle of sensibilities was entrusted for
+safe-carriage, and who in bearing his parcel here and there has spilled
+its contents with great recklessness, and with devilish consequence to
+himself.' And this voice grew into the tolling of a great Despair, for
+there was nothing to be done with this Paul Armstrong in the way of
+reparation or amendment, and there was no way of being rid of him save
+by suicide, and a doubt of the efficacy of that cure was heavy on him.
+To endure the unendurable, this was his burthen; to be yoked through
+time with this dolt and fool. Wretchedest of miserable fates, to loathe
+one's own soul, to find the most despicable of creatures enclosed within
+one's own skin. To play Siamese twin to a pustulous convict were a
+trifle beside this. To be your own black beast; to loathe your own soul;
+with a full heart to despise your own understanding--this is to start
+upon Despair's Last Journey in one sense or another, to find either the
+gulf or the gates of hope. For the alternative is eternal, and it will
+yet be known to all men--if not here, then elsewhere--that the way to
+the heights of spiritual wealth lies through the valley of spiritual
+bankruptcy, and that a man's follies are as contributory to his soul's
+salvation as his loftiest aspirations and his most ardent struggles.
+Ralston spoke wisely when he said, 'We lose to learn value.' We shall
+carry our cargo more carefully next time for having once shipwrecked it.
+The gates of hope are a better goal to aim for than the gulf, because
+the mariner saves time and suffering by passing through them, but the
+lesson is that no shipwreck is final.
+
+Was it, in truth, the father's voice, the authentic voice of William
+Armstrong, Paul's physical begetter, which preached this gospel through
+the lonely days and waking nights? The Exile could not tell, yet he
+believed, and the faith grew within him, that God's inexorable justice
+and infinite mercy are one and the same, that the human spirit which has
+not sinned knows no virtue, that the flower of the soul's hope strikes
+its root in the soil of the soul's despair.
+
+This learned, all is learned. The great trust and the great distrust
+alike are mastered. Courage and Humbleness have kissed each other, and
+the man steers between, safe in their companionship whatever seas may
+roar.
+
+The faith grew, but it was not clear, nor destined to be clear, until
+the divine hour of its true dawning was appointed, and that hour was not
+long delayed.
+
+Paul Armstrong had tracked memory from its earliest dawn till now. The
+pictured image of himself he had so long followed in fancy drew closer,
+until he and it merged into each other, and the shade and he were one.
+
+He had listened all day for the accustomed clangour of the trains, and
+had heard nothing. The brown-red smoke-fog had grown denser and more
+dense, and now it stung throat and eyes with its acrid and pungent
+atoms. The air was thick and hot, and objects only a score of yards away
+were but just visible. The runnel at the tent-door had barely a voice
+of its own. Paul guessed rightly that its course lay through a tract of
+forest fire, and that the greater part of its volume had evaporated in
+the heat. The river in the gorge plunged and thundered. The night
+came down, and a blind glare of dull red seemed to show itself above,
+revealing nothing else. For the first time since the forest fires had
+begun to smoulder, the dead air took a sense of motion. It stirred with
+a long, sluggish heave, and brought with it a dreadful heat, and a noise
+altogether disproportionate to the pace at which it moved--the sound of
+a mighty tempest. It breathed fitfully, heavily, and as if with labour;
+but at every breath it blew a fervent heat along, and at every breath
+there rose the same threatening roar of sound. There was something
+massive and ponderous in this strange noise. It was as if a sea in
+unmeasured storm were billowing nearer and nearer. And surely that red
+glow was brightening. The trunks of giant trees were silhouetted on it.
+
+Then with one slow heave, beginning like a sigh, but gathering in pace,
+the wind awoke, and in one minute it blew a hurricane. And with it came
+a voice--the voice of league on league of smouldering forest leaping
+into a roar of flame. The air burned with a sudden crimson. The
+monstrous noise of the torrent was drowned, and went unheard. The wind,
+with a sudden access of its force, was sucked along the valley by the
+amazing indraught of the fire, and it raged past him with such violence
+as to bring him to his knees. The smoke, which had hung without form
+through so many days, was ripped and twisted and dragged and beaten into
+a thousand writhing and tormented shapes. They went hurling down the
+wind as if that unspeakable voice of the parent fire had called them,
+and there were nothing for it but this mad answer to the appeal.
+
+It seemed impossible that the roaring noise should augment itself, and
+yet it grew and grew and grew--Niagara twenty-fold, Niagara fifty-fold,
+Niagara a hundred-fold. The eye discerned more and more as the wind
+cleared the air, and at last the panorama stood revealed in horrid
+splendour. On either side the canon the lower hills were all aflame.
+They tossed aloft pyramids of brightness; they burned dull-red in
+sheltered hollows; they flared fantastically on open heights;
+they brightened and darkened with mile-long undulations, and swift
+shudderings from blind black to blinding white, and then from that
+supreme of light to black again. These changes were wrought with
+dazzling swiftness. A flame which writhed over many acres flapped like
+the loosened end of a sail and vanished in the twinkling of an eye,
+and before the watcher could have cried out that it was gone, flaunted
+itself again at the sky, which overhung it like an inverted bowl of
+red-hot copper.
+
+The fire displayed a myriad inequalities in the landscape which were
+unseen in open day. It scaled ridge after ridge, and each in turn stood
+out against the blackness of the mountain on which an instant before it
+had seemed to nestle closely. It charged each acclivity with appalling
+strength, but there were times when the assaulting line wavered,-and
+retired as if the walls of darkness held a living force which had
+at times the power to beat it down. Then with a rush the height was
+carried; hell's victorious banner floated over one more conquered
+citadel, and the roar of triumph deepened.
+
+At times the fire seemed to carve the darkness like a knife wielded
+swiftly by some invisible giant hand. At times, catching the face of
+some lofty wooded cliff, it soared up like a rocket and left a trailing
+line which faded wholly as if the night had been triumphant there and
+had won back a portion of its invaded ground.
+
+For hours there did not seem a moment at which the watcher's life was
+worth purchase at a pin's fee, but the wind flawed madly here and there,
+and as if by constantly recurring miracle he stood safe. Tarred on by
+the wind, the fire climbed from sunset to near dawn. It climbed until it
+reached the feet of the eternal snows. Then one insulted mountain loosed
+an avalanche, and then another and another, until the incredible cones
+of fire were ridged with black.
+
+Paul Armstrong threw himself upon the ground and slept when the fires
+were miles and miles away. He awoke after many hours with an aching
+sense of light upon his eyes. The sun was high already, and the skies
+were clear. The valley and the mountains lay before him bare and black,
+with many spirals of dove-coloured smoke rising thinly here and there.
+And the man thought within himself:
+
+'After great mischief, peace. In a single year the fire-weed will have
+made this waste a fairy-land. The time will come when there will be left
+no token of this desolation. Nature endures no lasting loss, and is the
+soul less vital?'
+
+And he believed the things it was ordained that he should believe, and
+he bowed his head in prayer with tears of penitence and self-abasement.
+
+'What is left to me?' he asked.
+
+His father's voice spoke inwardly in answer, apart from his will,
+outside his will, as it had spoken from the first.
+
+'Duty!' said the voice. 'Bid the fire-flowers blossom in the wasted
+spaces of your own soul.'
+
+His tears gripped him at the throat with art almost intolerable anguish,
+and with such a passion as no man can experience twice in life he
+renounced his own despair.
+
+
+THE END
+
+BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Despair's Last Journey, by David Christie Murray
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